On Sun, Sep 17, 2023 at 06:26:49AM -0400, gene heskett wrote: > On 9/16/23 19:46, David Christensen wrote: > > On 9/15/23 19:37, gene heskett wrote: > > > On 9/15/23 20:12, David Christensen wrote: > > > > On 9/15/23 15:04, gene heskett wrote: > > > > > On 9/15/23 17:35, David Christensen wrote: > > > > > > On 9/15/23 12:28, gene heskett wrote: > > > > > > > I've just ordered some stuff to rebuild or expand my Raid setup. > > > > > > > This 16 port sata-III pci-e card: > > > > > > > <https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09L184W57?smid=A2H818KAC5I4D1&ref_=chk_typ_imgToDp&th=1> > > > > > > > along with a bigger drive cage, cables and such and > > > > > > > some gigastone 2T drives to make a raid big enough > > > > > > > to run amanda. And maybe put a new card in front of > > > > > > > my 2T /home raid10. > > > > > > > > > > > > Is everything going into one chassis? Have you > > > > > > considered an external drive chassis? > > > > > > > > > > > Call me cheap, my choice is diy assembly, SS stampings you put > > > together, all drive brackets and a dozen cables and a 5 drive power > > > splitter, $30. > > > Less than 5% of the price of that nice looking box. > > > > > > Fair enough. > > > > > > Searching the mailing list archive, it appears that you have an Asus > > PRIME Z370-A II motherboard (?): > > > > > > https://www.asus.com/motherboards-components/motherboards/prime/prime-z370-a-ii/ > > > > > > And, an Intel Core i5 processor (?). Which model? > > cpuinfo can't copy/paste, 6 core, i5-9600K CPU @ 3.70GHz but apparently very > pushable, I ran one cycle of memtester pointed at 16G's and saw it above > 4300 mhz a couple times, and that core hit 51C, which is 20C hotter than its > ever run b4. With my intermittent load it often loafs at 800 mhz & 29C, 33C > when OpenSCAD is munching on something I've designed. > > > How many GB of OS and apps do you have? Home directory? Bulk data? > > Amanda backups? VM's? Other? > > > > > > > > 4x the bandwidth (3.94 GB/s), 8 more SATA ports (24 total), and $42.31 > > higher price ($117.30). I would prefer this card for the bandwidth > > alone, and I never know when I might need those extra ports to > > temporarily connect a bunch of disks from other machines. > > > > > > If your goal is maximum capacity at minimum cost, HDD's have larger > > capacity, lower bandwidth, and lower cost per TB than SSD's -- per bay, > > per drive, and per port. Port multiplication makes sense with HDD's. > > > > > > For file server and backup server roles, I use ZFS with HDD primary > > storage devices and full bandwidth HBA. Read performance, write > > performance, and capacity utilization can be improved with ZFS > > compression, read performance can be improved with an SSD cache vdev > > (virtual device; e.g. partition), and write performance can be improved > > with SSD intent log vdev (mirror of partitions). For the backup server > > role, capacity utilization can be improved with ZFS deduplication and an > > SSD dedup vdev (mirror of partitions). > > > > > > Regardless of what you do with HBA's, I would connect the six SSD's to > > the six motherboard SATA III ports. > > > Which would tie them up. Is that the faster solution, moving the opticals to > a different card? The question then is can the bios see them to boot from > them? > > I did grab what I think is a newer bios yesterday but haven't tried to > install it yet. > mt86plus_6.20_64.grub.iso.zip > > > > A fresh install of Debian stable or old-stable should solve the storage > > I/O stuttering problems you are experiencing. (That motherboard has > > dual M.2 ports. Installing Debian onto an M.2 PCIE 3.0 x4 SSD would be > > very nice.) > >
See below: maybe get a new machine to do this on ... > I know zip about the new m2 stuff. Link to good info appreciated. I didn't > use it originally because I couldn't find the m2 sockets but probably didn't > look too hard as I was more concerned with getting another system built > after a usb socket on the previous occupant of that space caught fire and > tried to burn the place down. > Given what you have: m2 is probably faster than anything else you've got. Chuck a terabyte drive in and forget about running Debian anywhere else for your OS. Any add in card is likely to be slower than your MB sata ports which are relatively well connected / you will end up with contention between a relatively fast card and the motherboard with a bottleneck somewhere. Unless you buy the very best server grade cards - and even then - cheap cards are doing everything in software so you're just running an expensive bunch of disks and doing software RAID anyway - at which point you might as well be using mdadm. ZFS - a whole new learning curve for you, a bunch of tuning you may or may not want to do - and another thing for you to blame in due course, perhaps.. You have a fascination for buying drives and kludging things together - you might honestly be better getting yourself a really good case and a motherboard installed by someone else and then just building up a reasonable machine from a clean install at this point - and you wouldn't necessarily lose any data. > Can you find a link showing where the m2 memory is plugged in? > My 32G is in the dimm sockets. > > > > David > > > > . > Thank you David. Take care & stay well. > > Cheers, Gene Heskett. > -- All the very best, as ever Andy >
