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Mark Knecht, mused, then expounded: |
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> Hi all, |
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> The list is quiet. Please excuse me waking it up. (Or trying to...) ;-) |
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> |
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> I'm at the point where I'm a few months from running out of disk |
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> space on my RAID6 so I'm considering how to move forward. I thought |
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> I'd check in here and get any ideas folks have. Thanks in advance. |
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> |
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|
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Beware - if Adobe acroread is used, and you opt for a 3TB home |
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directory, there is a chance it will not work. Or more specifically, |
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acroread is still 32-bit. It's only something I've seen with the xfs |
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filesystem. And Adobe has ignored it for approx. 3yrs now. |
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|
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> The system is a Gentoo 64-bit, mostly stable, using a i7-980x |
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> Extreme Edition processor with 24GB DRAM. Large chassis, 6 removable |
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> HD bays, room for 6 other drives, a large power supply. |
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> |
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> The disk subsystem is a 1.4TB RAID6 built from five SATA2 500GB WD |
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> RAID-Edition 3 drives. The RAID has not had a single glitch in the 4+ |
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> years I've used this machine. |
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> |
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> Generally there are 4 classes of data on the RAID: |
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> |
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> 1) Gentoo (obviously), configs backed up every weekend. I plan to |
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> rebuild from scratch using existing configs if there's a failure. |
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> Being down for a couple of days is not an issue. |
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> 2) VMs - about 300GB. Loaded every morning, stopped & saved every |
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> night, backed up every weekend. |
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> 3) Financial data - lots of it - stocks, futures, options, etc. |
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> Performance requirements are pretty low. Backed up every weekend. |
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> 4) Video files - backed up to a different location than items 1/2/3 |
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> whenever there are changes |
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> |
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> After eclean-dist/eclean-pkg I'm down to about 80GB free and this |
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> will fill up in 3-6 months so it's time to make some changes. |
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> |
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> My thoughts: |
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> |
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> 1) Buy three (or even just two) 5400 RPM 3TB WD Red drives and go with |
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> RAID1. This would use the internal SATA2 ports so it wouldn't be the |
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> highest performance but likely a lot better than my SATA2 RAID6. |
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> |
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> 2) Buy two 7200 RPM 3TB WD Red drives and an LSI logic hardware RAID |
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> controller. This would be SATA3 so probably way more performance than |
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> I have now. MUCH more expensive though. |
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> |
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|
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RAID 1 is fine, RAID 10 is better, but comsumes 4 drives and SATA ports. |
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|
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> 3) #1 + an SSD. I have an unused 120GB SSD so I could get another, |
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> make a 2-disk RAID1, put Gentoo on that and everything else on the |
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> newer 3TB drives. More complex, probably lower reliability and I'm not |
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> sure I gain much. |
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> |
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> Beyond this I need to talk file system types. I'm fat dumb and |
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> happy with Ext4 and don't really relish dealing with new stuff but |
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> now's the time to at least look. |
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> |
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|
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If you change, do not use ZFS and possibly BTRFS if the system does not |
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have ECC DRAM. A single, unnoticed, ECC error can corrupt the data pool |
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and be written to the file system, which effectively renders it corrupt |
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without a way to recover. |
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|
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FWIW - a Synology DS414slim can hold 4 x 1TB WD Red NAS 2.5" drives and |
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provide a boot of nfs or iSCSI to your VMs. The downside is the NAS box |
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and drives would go for a bit north of $636. The upside is all your |
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movies and VM files could move off your workstation and the workstation |
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would still host the VMs via a mount of the NAS box. |
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> Anyway, that's the basic outline. Any thoughts, ideas, corrections, |
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> expansions, etc., I'm very interested in talking about. |
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> |
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> Cheers, |
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> Mark |
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> |
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-- |
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