Jump to content
  • 0

Unstable drivepool behavior


eagleknight

Question

Ok... so it feels like Murphy's law over the past weekend. I run a Server 2008 R2 box with 3 VM's currently one being WHS 2011. I had a drive failure in my pool... Ok not too bad... most my folders have duplication turned on. (I didn't have duplication on the client backup folder because I also back my PC's up with Crashplan). I also have Crashplan backing up my important folders to an external hard drive for the server. I told it to remove the drive and it it starts to check the duplication, but after leaving it overnight and returning to see only 6% I checked the drivepool task and no I/O bytes were increasing any longer. I resarted the full server and it starts again, but kept dieing around 3.5%-6%. So I turned all folders to no duplications and after and hour I had to pool back to 100%. I thought I would turn duplication back on folder by folder, but this still kept freezing at a low percentage. In the mean time my main PC gives a BSOD and my SDD drive dies. So since my client backups was not duplicated my full backups are now incomplete. Crashplan saved me for the User folder. I still have a hope of rebuilding my client database. I am going to try and image the failed hard drive and pull files off, but I am not crossing my fingers.

 

So throughout this ordeal with this slowness and the drive not duplicating I thought I would move it over to the host since Drivepool is supported on server 2008. I did this and it found the pool and quickly loaded checked the pool and went to 100%. Now trying to save my client backup I wanted to offload them to my wife laptop temporairly. About 170GB total. I started the copy and soon realized now it kept slowing down to nothing being copied. It would not give an error message, but on the drivepool and laptop nothing was being copied, but if I restarted the service it would start again. It got me thinking. I have an addon SYBA SY-PCI40010 PCI SATA II card. Currently only one 500Gb hard drive is connected that is in the drivepool. The rest are connected through the mother board. I moved the 500Gb over to a motherboard connector since I had an open slow from the failure. Now it has been copying flawlessly. I am very frustrated at this point... Is this Syba card not stable??? I mean Server 2008 R2 is not giving any errors from the SATA card. With all this happening it is making me want to buy a whole new Intel mobo... maybe my AMD isn't compatible... Any ideas.. sorry I have been such long winded.

 

Hardware:

AMD Phenom II X4 840 Processor

Mobo: GA-880GM-UD2H

16GB memory

2 x WD 320GB raid 1 for OS and VM's

Samsung 2TB - drivepool

Seagate 1TB - drivepool

Samsung 500GB - drivepool

Seagate 2TB - external crashplan storage

WD Red 3TB (on order to replace failed drive for drivepool)

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 answers to this question

Recommended Posts

  • 0

Eagleknight...

 

 I'm very sorry for your whole ordeal. That's not pleasant.

 

As for the Client Backup Database, we highly recommend duplicating it. Because all it takes is one damaged file, or even one missing file to destroy the entire database.  Trust me, I've been there and done that. A restore can fix the issues... but it usually does so by salvaging records. Which means you will lose backups. 

And while having crashplan is nice.... it's nowhere near as fast for recovery.

 

 

As for your card.... when you describe what was happening with it, my first thought was "I really hope it isn't an Silicon Images chipset". And yup, it is. Sil3124 specifically.  I hate these cards. So does Alex. Not only do that cause issues with Scanner (it only properly reports the first disk on the card, for SMART data), but they tend to fail under high loads. Which is precisely what you were seeing. And that's not limited to AMD or Intel. It's in any system. These chipsets are basically garbage, and should be avoided.

 

 

If you want, I can give you suggestions for cards to replace them with. But I would recommend just about anything that uses Marvell. And if it's open, one of the PCI Express ports, as you'll get better speed that way.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

The SYBA card you linked is a good one. I've used a similar chipset, and did not have any issues with it. Marvell makes pretty decent chipsets.

 

And don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to rag on SYBA. The issue is with the Silicon Images chipset. I've been in the home server community since ... well WHSv1 was released (end of 2007), and I've seen a LOT of issues with there chipsets, and have experienced them myself.  And Alex has had his share of issues with them, trying to get Scanner to read the SMART data from the drives, as I've said above. So, definitely avoid Silicon Image chipsets.

 

 

As for the HighPoint cards, they usually use Marvell, so they're pretty decent. And if it's only for a 4 port card, then they should be good to use.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

I ended up picking up that SYBA card with the marvell chipset. This has me thinking going forward maybe I should look at how I have the drivepool setup as far as where it resides. What makes the most sense... keeping it inside WHS 2011 or having the drviepool on the host Server 2008. It is easier to manage the user and shares through WHS 2011, but would I be gaining more performance moving it to the host?  If I had it on the host machine then create two VM hard drives that I had duplicated... would it would probably create extra work on the hard drives because when the client backups run it would be changing that whole large VM file and would have to be reduplicated everyday?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Honest, that depends on what you want. 

 

But running WHS in hyperV means that if your hardware fails, it makes it a lot easier to "port" over to a new system.

 

But I think if you have everything setup already, that you should leave it that way. But the amount of RAM it gets, and the number of other running VMs can adversely affect the VM.

 

As for the virtual hard drives, I would recommend passing the drives through to the VM. this will get better performance than hosting the VHD files on a HDD. Though, this is why a lot of people use a RAID5 array. Better speed and reliablity for virtual hard drives. 

But as I said, I think passing the disks through would be your best option.

 

But personally, I feel that running it on the hardware directly will get better performance (that or upgrading the host to newer versions of Windows with HyperV). 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

I created a new VM with WHS 2011 and moved the pool back in to this and all is well now except one thing... I read another post about the recycle bin and system volume information and duplication. I saw you recommended to turn duplication off. I did this and after a check today my pool is back to green status, but now it went to yellow and has a message. Only option to duplicate now or close.

 

Duplication warning

\system volume information\storageconfiguration.xml access denied

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

If i had to guess, the issue there may be a permissions issue that is preventing the pool from duplicating (rather, de-duplicating) the file.

 

TO be honest, I wish there was an easy way to disable the ShadowCopy service for using the DrivePool volume, as it doesn't support it.

The best method to fix this is basically to "take ownership" of the file (in the security tab for the folder) and then delete the file.

To do that:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309531

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Answer this question...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...