Jump to content

jmone

Members
  • Posts

    165
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    10

Reputation Activity

  1. Like
    jmone got a reaction from Christopher (Drashna) in 10GB connection between two pools - performance tips?   
    So got it all installed and working.  With large files copies, I used to get a max of 110MB/s between the pools over the network (eg maxing out a single Gigabit Link).  I now get a max of 150MB/s, some 36% faster (eg maxing out the single HDD at each end).  But as I now how heaps of 10Gb goodness, I also can now kick off a 2nd (or 3rd, 4th etc) copy between other HDD and get another max of 150MB/s per disk.
     
    I've had to twice copy all the contents from one pool to another (40TB mix of large, med and small files).  It took almost a week over Gigabit.  Just the extra 36% would cut days of that.... but in addition I could kick off a copy (outside DrivePool) for each drive in my pool and such a task would then be well under a day.
     
    It would be nice to have "FreeFileSync" style compare/sync between pools in DrivePool as it could then support a thread per physical drive instead of one per pool.
     
    Thanks
    Nathan
     
    Note: I started to look at 10Gb when Intel / MS no longer supported teaming / VLAN on their Dual NIC cards under Windows 10.   Look like they have now fixed this (MS released patches, Intel has verified, and plan to issue an updated driver in June).
  2. Like
    jmone reacted to Christopher (Drashna) in My Rackmount Server   
    Well, for the dashboard stuff ..... make sure all the WSE services are running on the service. Especially the "management" service. If it's not, see if the "Block level backup service" is running or not.  If not .... try running "wbadmin delete catalog" on the server (from an admin command prompt), and then re-setup the server backup. 
     
    And to make a point here.. I have to do this every f****ing time I add a disk, as the M1015 card I have enumerates the disks before the built in Intel controller .... and it causes this issue. 
    It's annoying, frustrating, and because Microsoft "cannot reproduce it", I get ignored. Despite the fact that I can reproduce this issue AT WILL. 
     
    And very nice looking, overall.
    And sorry to hear the SAS cables are ... basically too short. I have nice long cables, Too long, in fact. But better to be too long than too short. 
  3. Like
    jmone got a reaction from Christopher (Drashna) in My Rackmount Server   
    OK, so it lives!  My observations were:
     
    Norco 4220: I was spoilt using Lian-Li cases in comparison to the 4220 which is much more "agricultural"
    - The Norco Mini SAS cables are too short to reach all corners of the case.  If they were 0.6m instead of 0.5m it would be ideal.  I can just "stretch" them to fit between the M1115 ports and the back plane but the tension on a couple of these would keep the Goldern Gate Bridge up
    - The cable holes in the Fan backplane are oddly positioned (offset) from backplane connectors.  It's best to take out two of the fans to get them in and even then I keep disconnecting some of the Molex connectors trying to get the Fans back in.
    - The PS connector has no quick snap slots (if fact nothing on this case is screw-less)
    - Plenty of Room to work on the board and using SAS really keeps cable mgt easy.
    - No Cut fingers
    - No issue with the rail kit mounting and fitting to the rack (my 800mm depth rack is the bear minimum)
     
    Other Stuff:  Like all things, the physical swap does not take that long and off course it fired up just fine... but stuff did not work "right" out of the box:
    - The Mini-SAS to 4 x Sata (Reverse Breakout) cables work! ... though it took me a bit to work out what drives were my OS, OS Backup and which SATA controller mapped to which Physical Drive bay.
    - I could not get the 2nd M1115 card to be recognised in Windows Device Manager and it was taking ages to trouble shoot, so between boots I started googling for SAS Expanders (and cursing Chris).  Anyway, after uselessly playing with settings, a BIOS Update fixed it. 
    - So the Top Row is driven by the Mobo, and the other 4 Rows from the 2 x M1115.  I also still have 4 x spare sata ports for other uses if needed.
    - A nice solid 110MBs (GB sized files) / 70MBs (MB sized files) connection between my two PC Pools, which is pretty good.  Looking forward to seeing how it goes once MS/Intel fix the teaming issue on Win10.
     
    I've got it all in the rack and doing a DrivePool conversion (from Drivebender).  I need a few bits for the rack then I'll post a pic of it mounted.
     
    Thanks
    Nathan

  4. Like
    jmone got a reaction from Christopher (Drashna) in Refs and storage spaces   
    I think we are mixing terms of what bit does what,
    - ReFS : Just a better disk format in terms of reliability in writing and managing files than NTFS.
    - ReFS and Storage Spaces : Give the ability to pool disks as Simple, Mirror, or Parity Storage Spaces.  Mirror or Parity offers background scrubbing and error correction.  Parity Storage Spaces is described by MS for "where you want to maximise capacity and you're OK with lower write performance" 
     
    For me DP on ReFS is the better soln as, I just want a "Simple" pool (as I backup to another pool), and
    - While I'd like the background scrubbing and error correction, I'm not willing to lose 50% of my HDD space if using SS Mirror or the performance hit if using SS Parity on my main pool but I would consider using SS Parity on my Server 2012R2 Backup Pool.
    - DP offers much finer level of control regarding how pools work than SS.  
    - I look forward to "official" ReFS support in Drive Pool before I'd recommend the combination generally.
     
    Thanks
    Nathan
  5. Like
    jmone got a reaction from CosmicPuppy in Access Denied   
    I am currently removing a 4TB HDD and it will take around 24hours at this rate.  I too have just noticed that my Pool appears to be read only (Can not create any folders or files).  I'm not using duplication.  The following quote is from the online doco:
     
     
     
    I'm surprised this is considered normal behaviour for DP (as it was not the case with DB) and is counter intuitive to the whole purpose of pooling.  This may cause issues for me as an 8tb hdd could take a couple of days to remove and I could be trying to write to a folder during this time (TV Recordings for example - which is how I found out it was read only - JRiver complained it could not write to my folder).
     
    Thinking out-loud, would it be better to use the File Balancer to move all the files first, then use the remove disk function once empty to minimise downtime?  And if that would work, would it not make sense for the Drive Removal option to also function in the same way?
     
    Sorry if I'm off the mark as a DP Newbie and interpreted the above posts incorrectly.
     
    Thanks
    Nathan
  6. Like
    jmone got a reaction from Christopher (Drashna) in Q: Thinking of migrating from Drive Bender   
    Well that is "easy" so far, similar to the other thread on how to migrate all I did was:
    - Install DrivePool and the Plugins
    - Created a DrivePool using the Same Disks as DriveBender
    - Added a drive Letter to each HDD
    - Stopped the DriveBender and Stablebit DrivePool Services in services.msc
    - On each HDD, moved the folders with content from the DriveBender to the DrivePool folders (eg not Recycle Bin, Vol Info etc), this only took a few minutes as it is a move not a copy process
    - Rebooted
    - Removed Drive Letters for the physical HDD
    - Changed the Drive Letter and Name for the "Old / Now Empty" Drive Bender pool
    - Changed the Drive Letter and Name for the "New / Full" Stablebit DrivePool to what I was using before
    - Rebooted
     
    ...and not only is all my "stuff" where it should be, but the Windows Permissions, and UNC Shares were automatically re-established.
     
    To test:
    - Ran a FreeFileSync compare over this new Pool vs my Backup Pool (Drive Bender) and all looks good (I got one sub folder with a permission issue but it may have been as I was doing the compare while also changing other things.  2nd compare was fine).
    - I use JRiver Media Center and did a missing File check (both on a Local and a Networked PC) = All good
     
    So far Pretty Impressed.  Lets see how it goes over a week or so (I've Left DriveBender installed and working, just with no content in the folders). 
     
    Thanks
    Nathan
  7. Like
    jmone reacted to Christopher (Drashna) in Q: Thinking of migrating from Drive Bender   
    Well, thank you for your interest!
     
    And that's certainly a lot of questions.
     
    - Is ReFS supported on both Win10 and 2012R2
    ReFS is only supported on Server OS's officially (this is as per Microsoft, and requires a hack to support in client OS's, aka Windows 10). That said, we do have preliminary support for ReFS, and it appears to work fine. We need to do more testing to ensure complete compatibility with it. 
     
    - Are the 8TB Seagate's OK to use
    As for the 8TB Seagate Archive drives (I'm assuming that's what you're referring to... as there are absolutely no issue with the enterprise drives), see this thread:
    http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/1625-do-i-start-buying-8tb-archive-drives-or-not/
    The TL;DR of it is, yes, they're fine to use (I have 5, with a 6th on the way), but write performance isn't great and you may want to use a dedicated "cache" drive and the SSD Optimizer (doesn't have to be a SSD)
     
     
    - Any issues with the mix of SATA/USB Controllers I've listed
    Absolutely none. The only issue is that USB isn't all that reliable, and I personally recommend against using it for long term storage. eSATA is better. 
    That said, as for the cheap SATA cards... it depends on the chipset. SIL chipset based cards are horrible and shouldn't be used. 
     
     
    - OK to continue to use Hard Disk Sentinel for SMART monitoring
    Absolutely okay. However, we don't include integration with HDS, only for StableBit Scanner. But you can run both concurrently, without any issues.
     
    - I prefer Cascade over Balance for spreading the content across the drives (eg fill up one drive, move to the next) That's absolutely fine. You will need to download and install the "Ordered File Placement" balancer to do this though. https://stablebit.com/DrivePool/Plugins   Once you've installed and enabled it, you should be fine.   - OK to use "Lights Out" on my 2012R2 to keep it asleep most of the time Absolutely. And even better, we support the "running file" option for LightsOut, so that it creates a file when running tasks, so that LightsOut doesn't put the system to sleep.    http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_Scanner_Advanced_Settings Scanner_RunningFile  (this is done in the UI, so check the "Advanced Settings" section for details)   http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Advanced_Settings DrivePool_RunningFile    If you have any issues with this, use a 3rd party text editor such as Notepad++, or let me know (the text config file for DrivePool can be finicky)   - How fast is the Pool (eg I have teamed Dual Gigabit  - 2gbps) it's at least as fast as the underlying disks.  Since it's a file based solution, we can't do the same level of performance optimization that block based solutions (like RAID).  That said, we do have a number of performance optimizations that may help.  Including "Read Striping" (complicated), and Network IO Boost (prioritizes network traffic over local disk access, at the expense of CPU). And here is a link talking about the features: http://stablebit.com/Support/DrivePool/2.X/Manual?Section=Performance%20Options     - Any specific notes or issues serving media files (like with windows storage spaces and DVD stuctures) Don't store the Plex database on the pool (it uses hardlinks, which are not supported). Aside from that, none that I'm aware of.    - Any specific notes or issues with assigning permissions using Homegroup or UNC Shares Nope. In regards to permissions, it's just like a normal disk. No special considerations (aside form the Network IO Boost, for prioritization).   Though, I recommend using normal shares (using "fsmgmt.msc" to create and manage the shares) over homegroups.          Additionally, you may want to check out this thread:  http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/511-migrate-from-drive-bender-to-drive-pool/   It's a user created thread, but it outlines how to migrate from Drive Bender to StableBit DrivePool without having to spend hours and hours on moving files around
×
×
  • Create New...