Re: external drive enclosures / esata / port multipliers?
On Thu, 20 Jan 2011, Monte Milanuk wrote: On 1/19/11 10:23 AM, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote: I'm somewhat inclined to go with option 'C': an HP Proliant Microserver N36L - comes without OS (certified for RHEL5), 1GB ECC memory + 160gb SATA drive. Move the OEM drive to the optical drive bay, stuff the four HDD bays with 2TB drives and call it a day. A little more expensive than the eSATA 4-bay drive enclosure, still a good bit cheaper than the SAS/SATA 4-bay enclosure + SAS HBA card. Replaces the old desktop PC 'server' entirely. That would work, yes. I have seen a lot of people do something like that. If you buy a good motherboard and power supply, it is quite reliable. I don't know if HP used quality components, but they usually do on their server lines (not so much on anything desktop/laptop, though). -- One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond where the shadows lie. -- The Silicon Valley Tarot Henrique Holschuh -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110121191256.gc19...@khazad-dum.debian.net
Re: external drive enclosures / esata / port multipliers?
Monte Milanuk: I'm somewhat inclined to go with option 'C': an HP Proliant Microserver N36L - comes without OS (certified for RHEL5), 1GB ECC memory + 160gb SATA drive. Move the OEM drive to the optical drive bay, stuff the four HDD bays with 2TB drives and call it a day. A little more expensive than the eSATA 4-bay drive enclosure, still a good bit cheaper than the SAS/SATA 4-bay enclosure + SAS HBA card. Replaces the old desktop PC 'server' entirely. I have built a similar system myself. Main components: - Supermicro X7SPA-HF (Atom D510, 6*SATA, 2*GBit LAN, IPMI!) - Chenbro ES34069 case w/ 180W external power brick (quite big, but active cooling needed) I added 2*1 GB RAM, a slim DVD/RW drive, a spare 2.5 hard drive for the OS and four 3.5 disks. 3*1TB as RAID10 (yes, that's possible with mdadm) + 1*750GB as backup drive (obviously, that's too small, but that's what I had back then). I have it running 24/7, that's why I opted for a low-power CPU. For the same price (about 200 Euros for the board + the same for the case) you may of course get more powerful hardware in a standard-size case. Performance is quite ok for the task, though. Apart from file/web/mail/ printer serving, I am using this for mail, news and IRC (running in a screen session). Occasionally, I even transcode DVDs on it. With its two cores plus hyperthreading, the CPU performs surprisingly well (H.264 High Profile in 250-350% of real-time). Drawbacks: - The hard disks need active cooling (two fans are included in the case). Otherwise, they reach temperatures of 60°C. Thus, the system is far from being silent. I also added a 70mm fan for mainboard/CPU cooling. - The CPU severly limits IO performance because I am using disk encryption (LUKS). J. -- I wish I could do more to put the sparkle back into my marriage. [Agree] [Disagree] http://www.slowlydownward.com/NODATA/data_enter2.html signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: external drive enclosures / esata / port multipliers?
On 1/19/11 10:23 AM, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote: You're talking about 8TB of raw data. How much is all that data worth to you? Depends. 8TB of disks, but using raid 5 I figured it was more like 6 TB of data. Some of that is movies, music, tv episodes etc. (back up of iTunes libraries, so a lot of it cannot just be ripped again from the original media, because it was purchased digitally). Some more of it will probably be backup images from clonezilla of several machines on the network. And some will be backuppc snapshots from other machines, if I ever get that setup again. Backups don't protect you well from slow, insiduous corruption (chances are you will NOT have a backup from before the corruption when you finally notice it) unless you have a strong retention policy, which I have never seen anyone do at home. Probably not. That would require even more media (and $$$) than most people are willing to throw at the problem. I'd go with the SAS setup. The Arecca cards have very good reputation (although I haven't checked that specific card). I can't say anything about the enclosure or the cable, other than that you should be careful with that cable, and don't treat it harshly. That particular Areca card seems to have very mixed reviews, on further investigation. It has Linux drivers, but not many reviews had much good to say about them. Finding a non-RAID SAS HBA card that supports Linux, has an external port or two to connect to an external drive array, and doesn't cost more than the bloody drive enclosure (or the enclosure and a drive) and that works 'out of the box' that someone will recommend via first-hand experience (judging by reviews and such, support for cards among any one brand or product line apparently varies wildly) is apparently asking too much. I'm somewhat inclined to go with option 'C': an HP Proliant Microserver N36L - comes without OS (certified for RHEL5), 1GB ECC memory + 160gb SATA drive. Move the OEM drive to the optical drive bay, stuff the four HDD bays with 2TB drives and call it a day. A little more expensive than the eSATA 4-bay drive enclosure, still a good bit cheaper than the SAS/SATA 4-bay enclosure + SAS HBA card. Replaces the old desktop PC 'server' entirely. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/ihb73k$j4h$1...@dough.gmane.org
Re: external drive enclosures / esata / port multipliers?
On Tue, 18 Jan 2011, Monte Milanuk wrote: 4-bay enclosure w/ eSATA card + cable:$130 Hitachi 2TB SATA HDD ($120x4):$480 Grand total: $610 vs... 4-bay enclosure: $279 Areca 1300x4 card + cable:$197 Hitachi 2TB SATAII HDD ($130x4): $520 Grand total: $996 Is it really 50% mo betta? If so, is the SAS setup I listed a good, You're talking about 8TB of raw data. How much is all that data worth to you? Backups don't protect you well from slow, insiduous corruption (chances are you will NOT have a backup from before the corruption when you finally notice it) unless you have a strong retention policy, which I have never seen anyone do at home. I'd go with the SAS setup. The Arecca cards have very good reputation (although I haven't checked that specific card). I can't say anything about the enclosure or the cable, other than that you should be careful with that cable, and don't treat it harshly. -- One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond where the shadows lie. -- The Silicon Valley Tarot Henrique Holschuh -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110119182345.gb11...@khazad-dum.debian.net
Re: external drive enclosures / esata / port multipliers?
On 1/17/11 5:57 PM, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote: On Mon, 17 Jan 2011, Monte Milanuk wrote: My big question is... most of these external drive boxes seem to claim support for JBOD, RAID 0, 1, 10, 5, etc. - should I presume that is simply fake RAID like many commodity mobos have, and not Either that, or worse: data-eating crap like many low-cost PCI-SATA host bridges (such as some of the sil3xxx chips). Interesting... any particular examples? It seems that a lot of the SATA external drive enclosures I was looking at come with an eSATA card using a sil3xxx chipset, but no mention of data corruption in the user reviews, FWIW. really usable in Linux? In that case, with all the drives hanging off the one eSATA connection, will Linux (specifically Debian Squeeze) see all four drives, or just the first one? Will I be able to configure them in a RAID5 array as desired? It will see all disks, yes. But if the port-multiplier chip is buggy crap, your data is toast. It is best to avoid SATA port multipliers like the plague because of that, since it is extremely difficult to shop for an external bay with a particular chipset... Look for a specific hardware product that has been in the market for at least two years, and with many happy *Linux* users (Windows drivers might be working around chip errata unknown to Linux libata). Sorry, I can't personally recommend any. Or get a SAS HBA, and a SAS-attached enclosure. Far more expensive, but at least you can be sure it will work very well (yes, it will take SATA disks as well as the more expensive (and better) SAS disks). In other words '...avoid anything except the most expensive enterprise-grade equipment for a home backup storage solution' While good advice I'm sure, it kind of blows the budget out of the water and nixes the whole project. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/ih4bdj$fj3$1...@dough.gmane.org
Re: external drive enclosures / esata / port multipliers?
On Tue, 18 Jan 2011, Monte Milanuk wrote: On 1/17/11 5:57 PM, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote: On Mon, 17 Jan 2011, Monte Milanuk wrote: My big question is... most of these external drive boxes seem to claim support for JBOD, RAID 0, 1, 10, 5, etc. - should I presume that is simply fake RAID like many commodity mobos have, and not Either that, or worse: data-eating crap like many low-cost PCI-SATA host bridges (such as some of the sil3xxx chips). Interesting... any particular examples? It seems that a lot of the SATA external drive enclosures I was looking at come with an eSATA card using a sil3xxx chipset, but no mention of data corruption in the user reviews, FWIW. No, look in bugzilla.kernel.org, and assorted reports in LKML... not all SIL chips are broken. In other words '...avoid anything except the most expensive enterprise-grade equipment for a home backup storage solution' Nah. But be warned you have a 50% chance of getting crap, and plan accordingly to try to avoid the trap. And most expensive enterprise-grade equipment doesn't describe a small SAS jbod enclosure and a SAS HBA. You can probably get both for well below US$ 1k, and you can populate it with SATA disks just fine. -- One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond where the shadows lie. -- The Silicon Valley Tarot Henrique Holschuh -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110118182420.gb10...@khazad-dum.debian.net
Re: external drive enclosures / esata / port multipliers?
On Tue, 18 Jan 2011, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote: And most expensive enterprise-grade equipment doesn't describe a small SAS jbod enclosure and a SAS HBA. You can probably get both for well below US$ 1k, and you can populate it with SATA disks just fine. It is really well bellow US$ 1k: http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sas_cables_enclosures/ SOHO-grade, but still... -- One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond where the shadows lie. -- The Silicon Valley Tarot Henrique Holschuh -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110118183130.gc10...@khazad-dum.debian.net
Re: external drive enclosures / esata / port multipliers?
On Mon, 17 Jan 2011 15:32:51 -0800, Monte Milanuk wrote: (...) My big question is... most of these external drive boxes seem to claim support for JBOD, RAID 0, 1, 10, 5, etc. - should I presume that is simply fake RAID like many commodity mobos have, and not really usable in Linux? In that case, with all the drives hanging off the one eSATA connection, will Linux (specifically Debian Squeeze) see all four drives, or just the first one? Will I be able to configure them in a RAID5 array as desired? I would take a closely look on each enclosure specs because there can be many differences between them. (a quick Google search provides some interesting results on this matter) http://www.google.com/search?sclient=psyhl=encomplete=0site=webhpsource=hpq=esata+por+multiplier+enclosurebtnG=Search OTOH, you can also review this page where there are many sata chipsets listed along with their PMP capabilities: https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/SATA_hardware_features But again, nothing prevents the manufacturer from disabling such option in the device firmware :-/ Greetings, -- Camaleón -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/pan.2011.01.18.18.44...@gmail.com
Re: external drive enclosures / esata / port multipliers?
Okay... since this is not something I can go to the local office supply store (around here its either that or mail order) and pick up and look at it and see that tab A goes in slot B (i.e. how things physically fit/work together)... how exactly would I set this up, and what would I need? Lets say that I want to go with a four-bay enclosure as mentioned before. Something like this is what I had been looking at: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132029 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145298 4-bay enclosure w/ eSATA card + cable: $130 Hitachi 2TB SATA HDD ($120x4): $480 Grand total:$610 vs... http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sas_cables_enclosures/sas4bay.asp Then I would need a SAS HBA card like this: http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sas_hba/arc-1300-4x.asp Plus a cable like this: http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sas_cables_adapters/-1M.asp Which if I get it all 'bundled' from that place, prices out like this: 4-bay enclosure:$279 Areca 1300x4 card + cable: $197 Hitachi 2TB SATAII HDD ($130x4):$520 Grand total:$996 Is it really 50% mo betta? If so, is the SAS setup I listed a good, basic choice? I'd rather this stuff last a long, long time if possible. TIA, Monte -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/ih5i8d$6vj$1...@dough.gmane.org
external drive enclosures / esata / port multipliers?
Hello all, I have two older PCs on my LAN posing as 'servers'... one running FreeNAS off a USB stick using three 500GB hdds in a ZFS RAID-Z pool serving as storage for the LAN and one running Debian Lenny with an 80GB drive used as a general purpose 'tinker' box that I can ssh into, etc. Problem is that the SMART report for one of those 500GB drives in the FreeNAS box is showing some pre-failure attributes, and the whole array is a little small anyways. Rather than simply replace one 500GB drive with another 500GB drive, and still have no backup of the file server, I'd like to upgrade all the drives to 2TB ones - but I have no where to store that much data in the mean while. As such, I started looking at getting a 4-bay external drive enclosure with an eSATA card for the Debian box, with the hopes of creating a RAID5 + LVM setup using those drives and backing the data up to that external drive enclosure. After the backup is done, replace the drives in the FreeNAS box and rebuild the array there and mirror the data back. Then, I'd have both the primary storage (on the FreeNAS box) and a backup (which I don't have currently) using the external drive enclosure on the Debian box. My big question is... most of these external drive boxes seem to claim support for JBOD, RAID 0, 1, 10, 5, etc. - should I presume that is simply fake RAID like many commodity mobos have, and not really usable in Linux? In that case, with all the drives hanging off the one eSATA connection, will Linux (specifically Debian Squeeze) see all four drives, or just the first one? Will I be able to configure them in a RAID5 array as desired? Thanks, Monte -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/ih2jj4$pd6$1...@dough.gmane.org
Re: external drive enclosures / esata / port multipliers?
On Mon, 17 Jan 2011, Monte Milanuk wrote: My big question is... most of these external drive boxes seem to claim support for JBOD, RAID 0, 1, 10, 5, etc. - should I presume that is simply fake RAID like many commodity mobos have, and not Either that, or worse: data-eating crap like many low-cost PCI-SATA host bridges (such as some of the sil3xxx chips). really usable in Linux? In that case, with all the drives hanging off the one eSATA connection, will Linux (specifically Debian Squeeze) see all four drives, or just the first one? Will I be able to configure them in a RAID5 array as desired? It will see all disks, yes. But if the port-multiplier chip is buggy crap, your data is toast. It is best to avoid SATA port multipliers like the plague because of that, since it is extremely difficult to shop for an external bay with a particular chipset... Look for a specific hardware product that has been in the market for at least two years, and with many happy *Linux* users (Windows drivers might be working around chip errata unknown to Linux libata). Sorry, I can't personally recommend any. Or get a SAS HBA, and a SAS-attached enclosure. Far more expensive, but at least you can be sure it will work very well (yes, it will take SATA disks as well as the more expensive (and better) SAS disks). -- One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond where the shadows lie. -- The Silicon Valley Tarot Henrique Holschuh -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110118015753.gb18...@khazad-dum.debian.net
