Christopher (Drashna)

Here's hoping with the firmware upgrade and me checking the options in the BIOS, I could have this solved tonight . Although, I'll still be worried about adding 8TB drives (which I want to do). Maybe I could start by adding 8TB to the mainboard, if I fill those, maybe get a second, newer controller for the 8TB drives.

UPDATE!!

Got my 2 Reverse Breakout cables from Chris today, so I'm in the process of installing 8 more drives into my case.  Only have 1 left to do as of this update, and my total drive space is now up to 18.2TB.  Thanks Chris!
 
I've also made a decision to future proof my motherboard choice.  The motherboard has to be the most important thing in the case, as without it you don't have anything to connect all your parts to.  As I mentioned before, I'm not all worried about things like Hypervisor or EXSi or any of those lab type requirements.  It's just a simple file server for streaming content on the network, and the nightly computer backups.  HOWEVER, I don't want some piddly-ass cheap piece of junk either.  It needs to be future proof for upgrades down the line.  I still agree with Chris's suggestion of using the ASRock Rack board, and the E3C224 models seem to have what I would need.  USB3 (future!), PCIe AND PCI slots (past!).  The -4L model has 4 lan NICs as compared to the original one that only had 2.  So I think I'm going to go with that one.  I think with the Teaming functionality, it will help improve overall network performance.  I also considered the cost, and the -4L is only about $50 or so more, and the extra benefits justify it I think.  The only nagging thing I have is the future proof for the CPU.  I looked at the qualified CPU list, and based on what's currently available, it looks like the BEST I can do would be the "Intel Xeon E3-1276 v3 Haswell 3.6GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1150 84W Server Processor BX80646E31276V3".  I was kinda bummed about that, since I've been researching processors and like how the E5's are HUGE on their L3 Cache, but they're also HUGE on their prices (like $1.5k for a top of the line).  So I think in the end, I can justify saving up and spending $350 for the E3 down the line.
 
Since I'm still in the "save up" mode for the mobo/cpu/ram combo.. does anybody have any suggestions on something better before I pull the trigger?  Here's the basics of what I think I need:
 
- ATX/mATX/EBB Form Factor (to fit in the Norco 4224 case)
- 1 PCIe 8x slot (RAID Controller [Chris's MegaRaid M105 card])
- 1 PCIe 8x slot (SAS Expander [will buy after everything else (HP 24-36 drive with external SAS for additional addon case later if needed)])
- 1 SATA (for OS SSD Drive)
- 1 SATA (for future proofed OS SSD Mirror?)
- 1 SATA (for future proofed DrivePool SSD Optimize [still need to learn what that's all about])
- 2 USB Pin Headers (for front of case keyboard/mouse)
- 1 IPMI Port (sounds cool, would like to utilize it)
- 2+ NICs (for enhanced stability and throughput on the LAN)
 
I think that's it.  Not really a big list.  That's why I think the mobo I'm looking at will be perfect.
 
EDIT ->  Anybody ever dealt with SuperBiiz?  When I go to pcpartpicker.com and look at builds other people have done, and check out the prices of their parts, I'm constantly seeing a major price discount with SuperBiiz as compared to the "Big Two" of NewEgg and TigerDirect.  They're a Google Trusted Store, so that's gotta mean something.  I'm just curious how their company is, and how we they would handle DOA shipments and RMA's should an issue come up.

It took several attempts, but I finally reproduced it again after lowering the local cache size to 20MB (though that could just be coincidence). 'Drive tracing' seems to have turned itself off after the hard restart, but hopefully it caught enough to be helpful. I've uploaded it via the form on that log collection page.
 
Quick summary of how I reproduced it:
New 1GB unencrypted drive on DropBox with 20MB cache Copied ~700mb file across Hard reset after the file finished copying (ie. disk activity in resource monitor had finished), but still uploading (was maybe 50mb into the upload) File is now corrupt (has different hash) after drive recovers Just want to add, that its times like this (constant restarting) that you really appreciate having an SSD. Reboots so fast!

ok thanks, I will go with TLER enabled.

I figured it out.
I removed my license, installed/wiped new Windows 10, installed DrivePool and added my license and all is well.

Noted,  and I have talked to Alex about this recently (I keep on pushing it, because ... well ReFS).  
 
If we do implement it, the entire pool will have to be ReFS (eg, all the disks in it... for simplicity, as mixing file systems is a nightmare).  And it would be Server 2012R2 and up (do to the file system features we require)

Adding another vote for 2012 R2 ReFS support

Could you try downloading the attached file and placing it in "C:\Program Files\StableBit\DrivePool"?
DrivePool.Service.exe.config
 
(this is stock, except for the language override to english).

Just adding my interest in Mega being added at some point :-)

Well, the Beta includes the normal 30 day, fully featured trial. No need to commit to buying now (but there is a reward for doing so!).
 
The list of providers we've included by default are the main, well know providers. Since this is a public beta, we can definitely add additional providers.
 
As for Mega, it does appear to have an SDK for accessing their services, so it may be possible to add a provider.
I've flagged the request for Alex (in addition to including the SDK link to him).

Either should work either way.  
 
Though, if you only have the two disks, it should allow you to quickly remove the second disk from the pool (at least that's what I've seen in testing). Once done, be able to add the second disk, and it will recheck the duplication status and start duplicating the data right away.

Just wanted to give an update on how things are working for me on Amazon Cloud Drive.
 
I updated to version 1.0.0.378 Beta
 
Things have been working PERFECT so far. upload speeds have been awesome and i have not received any errors. The version before this one i was still getting I/O and bandwidth errors. This version has been a huge improvement from the previous version keep up the great work!

I'm not sure what your actual arguement is?
 
That NAS drives are overpriced?
 
I've had maybe 20 drives fail on me over the last 10 years,
 
they are always about 40C...
 
I'd rather pay slightly more for the longer warranty - most consumer NAS drives have 3 years, most desktop drives 1 or 2
 
for the last year I was mainly using WD 6TB Reds (+£5 for an extra year warranty) - what cheaper "desktop" alternative would you suggest?

I ran the system all day today, and it never went above 37, hottest drive stayed around 39.  I plan on doing a load test tomorrow by doing a defrag on each drive.  But it looks like everything is going smoothly.  I really like this case!

Well, I've used a HighPoint RocketRAID 2720SGL, specifically.  Aside from the quality of disks I was using, it was rock solid. 
 
But they are just rebranding Marvell chipsets, and installing customized firmware (which rely on proprietary commands for stuff like SMART).
 
But you're right, if you're going to have a lot of drives, getting something like an LSI card is a much, much, much better investment.

I was trying to find.. but cant:
 
When (recently) WD released the new 6TB Red Pro, one of the review sites made a great table using the (sometimes unpublished) information about the various WD drives and comparing the Blue/Black/Green/Red/Red Pro/Re+/Re/Se models and what you got extra at each step
 
aside from TLER and the NAS oriented firmware, the Red's do have better/more efficent motors than the green / blue (which are designed to run 8 hours a day, not 24)
 
While you need Red Pro or high to get actual hardware vibration sensors on the circuit board, the Reds are able to measure and adjust for the kind of vibrations you get in an array, which the desktop models cant do
 
there is more to it than just the warranty

Yes, externals. Seagate externals have one year warranty, the Samsung [same Seagate drive inside] three years. Why the difference? I suspect the Seagate case have a higher return rate due to poor cooling, they aren't willing to take the hit on returns. When they are removed from the case, the cooling is on you. Given proper cooling they should last as long as the desktop versions, it is exactly the same drive.
 
Is a desktop drive warranty not real? Really?
 
A NAS drive warranty from the same drive manufacturer is more real?
 
All your drives listed are desktop drives, with a "NAS" label stuck on them.
 
I don't want to get into a flame war here but I have problems following your financial and warranty logic, after looking at your temp charts.
 
Rail 1: The 4TB Seagates at the top of you temp chart are "NAS" - and have the same 3 year warranty as the desktop drives.Certainly not an Enterprise class drive. No real enterprise would use these drives for anything mission critical.
Rail 2, 3 The 4TB WDs  are also called "NAS" - and have the same 3 year warranty as the desktop drives. Certainly not an Enterprise class drive.No real enterprise would use these drives for anything mission critical.
Rail 4 The 8 TB Seagates also have a "NAS" label stuck on them, and have exactly the same warranty as a desktop drive. Certainly not an Enterprise class drive.
 
No real enterprise would use these drives for anything mission critical, if at all. Plus the known issues with the technology [8TB] would prevent any enterprise implementing these drives for the near future until it is sorted out down the road - keep in mind, you might get an pat on the back for buying cheap "prosumer" drives, but you will be fired for lost data because of it or performance hits that have an effect on production. I know, I have seen it. That's "reality" and what "Enterprise" really means. Jobs are at stake. Nobody wants to hear you saved $500 bucks when a plant shuts down for a hour or two. They want you gone. These drives you have are aimed directly at the home market for what we are using them for. I refuse to pay big money for the same warranty because they put a NAS label on it. I am not saying they are BAD drives, I am saying they created this classification to squeeze more money out of consumers.
 
I won't dig any deeper, maybe you have an "Enterprise" drive not in the chart, but I do know what actual Enterprise drives are and what they cost [i'm sure you do too] - and I certainly wouldn't buy one and stick it in a notoriously bad cooling NORCO case with the power supply blowing air into the case. I would buy drives with the same performance [purchase an extended warranty if you want 5 years], use the savings to get a professional case and proper power supply setup. Or correct the issues with the NORCO and the power supply.
 
What does it all boil down to? With Enterprise drives, the hope is it will be more robust that plain old ordinary desktop drives. My experience with servers is that they are, meaning they last longer, but how much of that is due to good case engineering and cooling based on years of engineering experience that the major manufacturers have? I suspect it makes the difference. We will see with these so-called NAS drives aimed directly at consumers two or three years down the road. I suspect the failure rate will be the same as desktop drives. The drive manufacturers obviously know this, hence the same warranty as ordinary desktop drives. As for the price premium, what did you gain by paying more for a "NAS" drive - the warranty is the same. If you do have real Enterprise rated drives not on your chart, well, they are again another step up in price from the consumer "NAS" drives - and you get an extra two years warranty. You also get a performance increase in general over these NAS drives.. So you pay a hundred or more extra for speed you don't need to stream and store video - and an extended warranty. Five years down the road the drive will be outdated and practically worthless, so if it fails on year 4.5, you get a replacement drive [with Seagate it may be a "refurbished replacement drive"] that has outlived it usefulness in size and performance.
 
As for data integrity, you are the same as me - you use drivepool and scanner, both great tools for monitoring and finding problems, and duplicate everything. Hence I can save money on drives using these tools and still feel safe.
 
Suspenders with a belt. Very expensive suspenders. When thousands to millions of $ ride on it, I get it. Suspenders and a belt with a rope backup. Go Enterprise and go real Enterprise casing / cooling. When it is movies and tv shows I don't.get it.It does not compute as they say.
 
Or maybe I'm full of "it". But my brain does not allow me to see it your way, using logic. As they say, different strokes for different folks.Please point out where I am going wrong so I can make sense out of this.

I'm the same... I previous shelled drives when the externals were inexplicably cheaper than the internals; despite it being the same disk with some additional haradware, but then you lose the warranty
 
I've got 12 enterprise 4TB (I got a good deal)
 
about 14 Red 6TB - but i've got 4 year warranties on those
 
and a few Seagate 8tb ones

That is funny : as I was Googling thing like "M1115 flash IT" or things like that, I ended back here, reading some of your posts saying that you were running a M1115  .

Indeed I do use Scanner + DrivePool (I mentioned this at the very bottom of the first post
 
It's not a shameless plug when it is good advice and a great deal!
 
I'll be converting my other 2012-R2 StorageSpace server over to DrivePool soon (already have the DrivePool key) and will be adding Scanner to it as well.  The integration of the two has come a long way in the past few years! (I've been a StableBit customer for a few years now).  

Thanks Chris!  Will update when more news happens!

I thought I had mentioned this before on this site but regardless here it is again.
 
I noticed a lot of folks here are buying new consumer type equip for their servers.  That's what I did for years until I discovered UnixSurplus and bought this:
 
http://www.unixsurplus.com/product/nas-vmware-raid-server-32-bay-35-sas-or-sata-jbod-storage-array-up-to-96tb
 
This is retired commercial equip with lots of years left in it.  This is two separate units, the top is a 1U server which has a S5000PSL Intel motherboard with dual Xeons.  I got mine fitted with 16GB of ram.  The unit below is a 16 bay drive unit that can handle SATA or SAS drives.  Both these units are half depth and very light, not a all like the HP DL360's I have. I have had mine running for about 3 years now non-stop with no problems.  I liked it so much that I purchased a 2nd set as a backup. 
 
You can't beat the price.
 
I bought mine without a card because I was going with the HighPoint 2722 Non-RAID controller.  I can confirm this card works like a charm with WHS 2011 or Win 10 and it passes the S.M.A.R.T. data.  If you do get a server here without the card ensure you get the 1U riser card for it.  It may or may not have it.  Make sure you ask for it.
 
I no longer have to worry about how I'm going to squeeze one more drive in my PC case.  BTW, these drive bays can be daisy chained.
 
Here is an old picture of my setup.  I hadn't gotten my 2nd server/drive bay yet.  It was a cheap build for me, the rack was about $70 and it does the job.  I hope this post gives people an alternative to consumer class equipment.
 
 
Ron
 

Glad to see its been approved for production!!! keep up the great work!

I updated my setup about 6 months ago and thought I would share as it works better than ever:
 
Chassis: Norco 4220
Power Supply: LEPA 1600W
Motherboard: SUPERMICRO MBD-X9DR7-LN4F-O
Processor: Intel Xeon E5-2660 x2
Memory: G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 32GB x4
Add-On: HighPoint RocketRAID 2760A
Operating System: Hyper-V Server 2012 R2
OS Drive: 480 GB Mushkin SSD
VM Drives: 240GB OCZ Agility 3 x3 (RAID 0)
VM Backup Drive: Samsung 1TB in a dual eSATA dock
DrivePool VM: Windows Server 2012 Essentials
DrivePool Drives: Toshiba 3TB x9 (Pass-Throughto WS2012E VM)​​
DrivePool Drives: Seagate 3TB x8 (Pass-Through to WS2012E VM)
DrivePool Drives: HGST 6TB x3 (Pass-Through to WS2012E VM)
 
Other Services on VMs: Web, TeamSpeak server and music, MySQL (For Kodi and Web), DNS, DHCP, RADIUS, IM, E-Mail/Webmail, Video/Music conversion for mobile​

I built this system a couple weeks ago to replace a HP MediaSmart EX485 with 12 TB storage.  This is used to provide full client PC backups for 5 PCs, network storage for user files that need to sync across our desktop and notebook PCs, bulk file storage and media streaming (temporarily Mezzmo for DLNA but am migrating over to Plex Media Server).  The biggest issue I've had so far was intermittent drive errors getting logged in Windows' Event Log.  I finally got it resolved yesterday by disabling IntelliPark on the Red's using wdidle3.
 
Fractal Design Node 304
Silverstone Strider Gold 550W + short cable kit
ASRock E3C226D2I
Intel Xeon E3-1265L V3
Corsair H90i AIO
2x 8GB Crucial DDR3-1600 ECC
Plextor M6e 256GB PCI-E SSD (OS and programs)
6x 6 TB WD Reds (for storage pool)
Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials
Stablebit Drivepool + Scanner to combine the 6x Reds into a single drive pool with selective folder duplication.