Project: Galaxy 5.0

What does RTM stand for that some of you have been using in reference to Windows? I'm pretty sure it's not "Read the Manual". :eek: Thanks.
 
I want to see benches of those 2.5" 15k drives... I have a bunch of 10k ones and I'm wondering how much better performance the 15k ones give.
 
I want to see benches of those 2.5" 15k drives... I have a bunch of 10k ones and I'm wondering how much better performance the 15k ones give.

I'm also looking forward to them myself. I'm expecting to have something up for you guys tonight. I really hope these things are cracked up to what they are promised to be.
 
Bull. They may not support vmware or whatever the hell citrix bought but they are still supporting virtual server.

I do agree with you on hyper-v. ESX is way too expensive.

Uhhh - I don't think we have a disagreement here - M$ still supporting virtual server went without saying, seeing as how microsoft owns it. Virtual Server effectively became Hyper-V
 
Cannot wait for the benchies!!

Oh, Ockie, I know every time I spend more on my server, some complication makes me doubt myself, but after you get it working, it was worth it!!!!
 
Kudos again on a nice build. Always love them!

Thanks doh!


Okay, the HDD mounting bracket showed up. YAY! Problem. The stupid bracket mounts the drive high in the case, thus causing a person to have to use a right angle sata cable and a right angle sata power cable... I got the sata cable, but not the power cable... thus another delay.

On a good note, things are falling in place. Still some issues to work out with.
 
Tried windows 2008 tonight, noticed a few things:

Pros:
3405 drivers are built in, this is nice, no dang floppy needed
Nice interface
Nice features

Cons:
Forced to use strong passwords
Unchecking the quick format box does not seem to work (It formatted a 1TB drive clean, now I have to figure out what was cleaned out, I PRAY that it's an empty drive.
Video drivers have to be forced
LAN chipset drivers could not be forced, thus did not work



Overall, the 2008 seem to provide a lot of cool things, but it pretty much ends there. I'm here to serve files and 2008 seemed to do everything other than that (at least easily like 2003). The fact that I had to use diffrent motherboard drivers to make it work, scares me, so for now I'm going to stay on the 2003 bus until supermicro can release official 2008 drivers.

I hate limitations and restrictions (obviously it's a great thing for servers), but for my application, it doesn't seem to make much sense.
 
What version of Server 08' are you using btw?
Also, did you come up with a rack/cabinet solution yet?
 
What version of Server 08' are you using btw?
Also, did you come up with a rack/cabinet solution yet?

Enterprise x64


I just went back to 2003 and I'm almost complete. This system is screaming fast. Initial benchmarks on the R10 SAS drives yields 450MB/s and it's not even optimized/upgraded yet.


Screenshots will come shortly.
 
I just went back to 2003 and I'm almost complete. This system is screaming fast. Initial benchmarks on the R10 SAS drives yields 450MB/s and it's not even optimized/upgraded yet.


Screenshots will come shortly.

Holy sh*t, cannot wait to see the benchmarks!!
 
Congrats, Ockie. It's frustrating to encounter those speed bumps, like the cable and Windows. But once you get it working, it makes it that much more satisfying and rewarding. :) Looking forward to the screen shots. :cool:
 
Some starter benchies, things should be faster when I tweak/upgrade it

8MB


32MB
 
I just went back to 2003 and I'm almost complete. This system is screaming fast. Initial benchmarks on the R10 SAS drives yields 450MB/s and it's not even optimized/upgraded yet.

I'm sure you know this already, but from the screenshots below the only 450 MB/s you're getting is burst transfer rate. This does almost nothing for real performance. That said, raid 10's strong point isn't sequential transfer rate - with that kind of access pattern you essentially waste half of your disks - it's random reads.
 
I'm sure you know this already, but from the screenshots below the only 450 MB/s you're getting is burst transfer rate. This does almost nothing for real performance. That said, raid 10's strong point isn't sequential transfer rate - with that kind of access pattern you essentially waste half of your disks - it's random reads.

Yup. I should have defined the 450 a little more. Either way, these are shit fast.
 
Your benches for 4 x 15k SAS drives on an Adaptec 3405 is good, but I am pretty sure the Adaptec is holding their peak abilities back. Case in point, I benched 16 x 1Tb drives on an Adaptec 31605 (the 16-port version of your card) and the I/O performance was less than HALF that of the Areca 1280ML running the same 16 drives in Raid5 configured with the same stripe size, with the same 256MB of cache memory on each card, I am pretty sure if you threw those SAS drives onto an Areca, I/O would increase.

That said, personally I would've still gone with the Adaptec for your system volume, since the Adaptec is the rock solid card that won't ever let you down. With an Areca, even though my own experience with the 1280ML is "so far so good", I still have some doubts lurking in my mind about its ability to operate trouble-free over months or years. Little things like the web GUI for configuration that looks like it took 2 minutes to make in Frontpage, or the fact their tech support apparently can't speak english, don't help ease my doubts. These issues are quite the opposite when talking Adaptec. I really wish Adaptec would break out of their mediocre performance bracket some day with a new gen of cards with replaceable cache modules, etc. but each new generation of cards they've come out with for last 10 years+ has been rock solid but ho-hum performance.

If you ever take the plunge and throw your 1Tb drives in RAID5 or RAID6 on the 1280ML, then your HDTach benches may look something like this (I/O goes up almost linearly with each new drive added to array - this bench was when I had 16 x 1Tb drives in RAID5 on the 1280ML):

hdtachareca256mbvc3.jpg
 
Your benches for 4 x 15k SAS drives on an Adaptec 3405 is good, but I am pretty sure the Adaptec is holding their peak abilities back. Case in point, I benched 16 x 1Tb drives on an Adaptec 31605 (the 16-port version of your card) and the I/O performance was less than HALF that of the Areca 1280ML running the same 16 drives in Raid5 configured with the same stripe size, with the same 256MB of cache memory on each card, I am pretty sure if you threw those SAS drives onto an Areca, I/O would increase.

If you ever take the plunge and throw your 1Tb drives in RAID5 or RAID6 on the 1280ML, then your HDTach benches may look something like this (I/O goes up almost linearly with each new drive added to array - this bench was when I had 16 x 1Tb drives in RAID5 on the 1280ML):


odditory, that is very impressive, cannot wait to get my 1280ML (still getting funds together!!)

I agree with what you said, Ockie's benchmarks are right on, for the hardware he has!!!, I too wish that Adaptec would get their hardware updated to gain better speeds.....
 
gjvrieze, if you are interested in a 1280ml, please let me know. I'm about to RMA mine and will sell you the replacement.


My 1280 is acting up and seems to be causing issues with my drives, I've had it. You can follow my issues here: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1272531


I've had nothing but an joyous experience with the adaptec, until the acera came along. I'm going to guess it's a varieity of issues or just a doa card. Oh the enjoyment of newegg not wanting to take it back (past 30 days)... now i gotta deal with areca... sigh.
 
gjvrieze, if you are interested in a 1280ml, please let me know. I'm about to RMA mine and will sell you the replacement.


My 1280 is acting up and seems to be causing issues with my drives, I've had it. You can follow my issues here: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1272531


I've had nothing but an joyous experience with the adaptec, until the acera came along. I'm going to guess it's a varieity of issues or just a doa card. Oh the enjoyment of newegg not wanting to take it back (past 30 days)... now i gotta deal with areca... sigh.

Once you know how the RMA process is going to work, PM with a price and time frame, and I will prolly buy yours in that case:)
I am guessing you are going to buy another one and overnight it, so as not to be down any longer...

I really do not like this story one bit, once I have 20tb of data on this controller, it cannot mess up, and Ockie, your luck with the card is less then pleasing....

Glad to hear what you think of the Adaptec controllers!! My fall back controller is the 31605......
I hope that with this expensive of a card, that Areca's support has good turn around for ya:)...
 
Once you know how the RMA process is going to work, PM with a price and time frame, and I will prolly buy yours in that case:)
I am guessing you are going to buy another one and overnight it, so as not to be down any longer...

I really do not like this story one bit, once I have 20tb of data on this controller, it cannot mess up, and Ockie, your luck with the card is less then pleasing....

Glad to hear what you think of the Adaptec controllers!! My fall back controller is the 31605......
I hope that with this expensive of a card, that Areca's support has good turn around for ya:)...

I think I'm either plotting to go with an Adaptec or a Highpoint. Adaptec so far has won me favors and I do want the built in signaling cables, so far I think this is the way I'm going. Highpoint is half the price of the adaptec, thats the only issue that I have right now.

Right now I need to test out to see what exactly is causing this problem, I really want to find out and I also really want to know if another controller will solve my issue.


Eitherway, I'll cut you a hell of a deal on the areca, I simply do not want to give them another try especially when I already got a drive formatted I did not want it to format and especially since I got the WD GP drives (I'm starting to think it may be a GP issue with the controller)
 
I think I'm either plotting to go with an Adaptec or a Highpoint. Adaptec so far has won me favors and I do want the built in signaling cables, so far I think this is the way I'm going. Highpoint is half the price of the adaptec, thats the only issue that I have right now.

Right now I need to test out to see what exactly is causing this problem, I really want to find out and I also really want to know if another controller will solve my issue.


Eitherway, I'll cut you a hell of a deal on the areca, I simply do not want to give them another try especially when I already got a drive formatted I did not want it to format and especially since I got the WD GP drives (I'm starting to think it may be a GP issue with the controller)

I assume you would go with the 31605, but what card from Highpoint has your interest??

Do you have a non WD drive that you can test on each port of the controller, if you did, and it shows up fine each time, you would know that the bug lies between the controller/drive combo....

Sweet deal, I could use that, went on strike at work, so it is going to be a little slower for me for awhile, but I almost have the funds in order for the 1280ML......
Weird, make sure to keep us abreast of any news:)
 
gjvrieze, if you are interested in a 1280ml, please let me know. I'm about to RMA mine and will sell you the replacement.


My 1280 is acting up and seems to be causing issues with my drives, I've had it. You can follow my issues here: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1272531


I've had nothing but an joyous experience with the adaptec, until the acera came along. I'm going to guess it's a varieity of issues or just a doa card. Oh the enjoyment of newegg not wanting to take it back (past 30 days)... now i gotta deal with areca... sigh.

I avoided an Areca card...I'm running an Accusys card for my setup. The only thing that sucks is there are no signed drivers for Vista x64 yet, so I have to F8 every startup to load the drivers.
 
I assume you would go with the 31605, but what card from Highpoint has your interest??

Do you have a non WD drive that you can test on each port of the controller, if you did, and it shows up fine each time, you would know that the bug lies between the controller/drive combo....

Sweet deal, I could use that, went on strike at work, so it is going to be a little slower for me for awhile, but I almost have the funds in order for the 1280ML......
Weird, make sure to keep us abreast of any news:)


Hmm... the only non GP drives I have are in other boxes, I guess I could pull some out... at least it will eliminate a defective card and make it rather imcompatible.
 
I think I'm either plotting to go with an Adaptec or a Highpoint. Adaptec so far has won me favors and I do want the built in signaling cables, so far I think this is the way I'm going. Highpoint is half the price of the adaptec, thats the only issue that I have right now.

Right now I need to test out to see what exactly is causing this problem, I really want to find out and I also really want to know if another controller will solve my issue.


Eitherway, I'll cut you a hell of a deal on the areca, I simply do not want to give them another try especially when I already got a drive formatted I did not want it to format and especially since I got the WD GP drives (I'm starting to think it may be a GP issue with the controller)

Please read my reply in your other thread about the Areca problems before tossing the card. I happen to think that card is fine. As a last resort before dumping that card I might also consider firmware flashing those GP drives to disable TLER. There is a WD utility to enable/disable TLER. Too early to go down that road though since it shouldn't be an issue when you want to run the drives standalone.

How did one drive get formatted that you didn't intend for? What action did you perform?
 
Some starter benchies, things should be faster when I tweak/upgrade it

32MB

lsi-fujitsu-4drive.png


I'd be expecting more performance out of 15k drives honestly... My benches are with 10k Fujitsu drives on a lower end LSI controller.
 
Ockie said:
<snip>How does your (our) areca handle additional drive expansions? Is it pretty quick? Is it pretty sucessful? Does this controller support array shrinking? (aka, if you decide to remove a drive).

First let me say congrats on deciding to go RAID volume - with individual disks you aren't getting the I/O boost that you do with all of them working together, as you can see on my HDTACH benches a few posts back.

To answer your question,

Migrating from 7 drives RAID5 to 8 drives RAID5 = 9 hours
Migration from 15 drives RAID5 to 16 drives RAID5 = 20 hours
Migration from 22 drives RAID5 to 23 drives RAID5 = 36 hours
MIgration from 23 drives RAID5 to 24 drives RAID6 = 10 hours

These times are common for array controllers, and makes sense if you ever find yourself reading up on the boring intricacies of raid controllers and find out what they're actually doing during an expansion - think of it like you have a 15 x 15 foot rug and you want to make it a 16 x 16 foot rug - you can't just start weaving onto the ends, you have to start from scratch weaving a new rug that will be 16x16 feet. This is because the number of stripes in the array is equal to the number of drives in the array, so expanding means writing a whole new array with a whole new set of stripes starting at the beginning of the array.

Considering we're talking MULTI-TERABYTE arrays here (far removed from the days of moving from a 7 drive array of 18GB or 36GB SCSI disks to an 8 drive array) its also easier to understand why these operations take many hours, sometimes over days...

Note that I timed an Adaptec 31605 migration from 15 drives RAID5 to 16 drives RAID5 and it took about 36 hours.

Does it support array SHRINKING? No, and I've never seen a controller that does. Reason being, with an expansion, the controller just tacks the extra space onto the end of the logical volume. With a shrink, the controller has no idea what sectors have partition data or not - the array controller is operating at a layer below that of the logical volume/operating system partition. If you want to shrink, only choice is backing up to other media and recreating the array to a smaller size.

In conclusion, I did 5 or 6 expansion tests with the Areca 1280ML both on test arrays and a live array, and I did 4 or 5 purposeful drive failures both in RAID5 and RAID6 (took about 8 or 9 hours in each scenario to rebuild the failed the drive - way faster than array expansion), and the Areca never hiccuped; each expansion was successful. I even pulled a drive (by accident) DURING an expansion operation, and the Areca first finished the migration and then immediately began rebuilding the array. I was s-ing my pants for about 20 hours not knowing what the outcome would be; product specs for many array controllers will claim your array is still protected if a drive fails during an array expansion, but until you see it for yourself you second-guess ofcourse. It finished, and heart failure was avoided.

I feel the controller is solid, and far outperforms the Adaptec 31605. It's still hard to believe I have 22,000 Gigabytes on a home server!
 
The new seagates are installed and the raid volume is being created at this moment. So far it's looking really good.... lets hope this keeps going!
 
lsi-fujitsu-4drive.png


I'd be expecting more performance out of 15k drives honestly... My benches are with 10k Fujitsu drives on a lower end LSI controller.

I may have four drives, but keep in mind, it's raid 10
 
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