Hi Moogle
I just wanted to say a massive thank you for the time you put into your response
I was looking to gain an insight into how the physical hardware could be setup differently and better and I was happy to consider including lower cost inclusions (I provided the example of another SSD for a RAID 1 System pool, You mentioned you have done this). Additionally I was also after advice on setting up the software. e.g. HBS backup, HBS sync folders, snapshot folders, snapshot volumes, snapshot replication. I mentioned thin volumes to use snapshots and keep many versions, but my thoughts on this were more toward the 8TB Pool and it then having the ability for snapshot replication to the remote 251D, rather than using HBS3 sync. i.e.There may be a way to compress an original volume to a separate pool as a a full backup that also has the ability to snapshot version control. I know the reasons as to why back in the day this was the 'Holy Grail' and why it couldn't be done. but there could be better software defined ways to achieve Grandfather Father Son style backups within the realm of what I have at my disposal, or for a small cost.
Just because I "Think" I know what i'm doing, doesn't mean i'm not missing some 'nowadays' obvious things. I have been out of tech for 12 years, being an Avid watcher of LTT, Gamers Nexus, some Level 1 Tech and Lawrence Systems videos, doesn't match real world experience.
why are the capacity sizes all different? for boot drive i can understand, but with raid you want the capacity size to all match ideally.
The reason the kit looks like a horrid hodge podge, is because, well, you guessed it; it is
I used to run an Intel SSR212MC2 with 9 of those WD500GB drives (3 spare bays), that's where the drives came from, and this was back in the day when RAID 5DP (6) was being shouted as a big thing by IBM, EMC2 et al. Intel had only recently come out with a 10GB NIC and it's driver was limited to Windows Server 2k3 iirc , and setting up ISCSII was separate manual software and tweak of drivers iirc.
The Intel SAN was still working, there was nothing wrong with most of the drives (and they are still going strong), but I couldn't have a jet plane in the house and wanted a NAS where I could use most of the drives and replace over time. It was also cheaper to get the 1282 than a 672 and 673 at the time.
I bought 4x2TB barracuda's, then the youtube tech world blew up about WD and SMR, so I bought the 8TB Exos drives, thought 'well my old drives are probably SMR but are absolutely fine, so i'll keep using them in raid6 (originally 6, then moved to 10) but with a (lying around) 2TB Barracuda sync. Later I had the need to build a Surveillance 'nannycam' to make sure the mum in law was being cared for properly(251D &the 4tb ironwolf's)
Yes thats the one
and also what do you mean by using the ironwolf as home backup? what device is it backing up?
Home Backup = all local machines and phones. There are no mapped network drives, so everything on the nas is a copy from an original source.
is the Exos 2KE101 in raid1?
Yes the 8TB Exos are in Raid 1, there is no spare HDD ready to take over.
what's this for?
Currently as a large backup of everything, old and new, with overkill capacity for the future. (at that time buying these was a lot cheaper than 4x4TB Raid6), the plan was to invest in 4TB's when prices settled (HDD factory fire in China iirc) and began to come down again. Yeh, I didn't predict ChiaCOIN.
make sure you test those spare drives see their condition. note the bad one and zero fill format it, then dispose of it. Don't use a faulty hdd. it's a goner.
I marked the faulty at the time, the boxed spare is the replacement for it. Neither is being used atm. Despite being a Hard Drive Hoarder (12x 80-120GB that need to be uploaded, also lying around and again from the old days). I do destroy and chuck drives and will the presumed dodgy 2TB baracuda, when i've had chance to push it and see what the issue is in a test system.
Is your friend reciprocating by allowing you to do offsite backup at his place in return? or is he paying for the electricity for housing the storage at your place? or is he just taking advantage of you?
It's my 251D, Mum in law is now in a home, so it's being repurposed and I would rather have the ability to help a friend and use a spare 2TB (1.5TB actual) to help them out with backups and in return gain offsite backup, than sell the 251D for not a lot. It seemed worth it to keep it.
Also use a VPN for remote access. Setup VPN server on your router, then ask your friend to connect to you using a VPN client
Thank you, I did mention QVPN, Qlink and also mentioned not exposing ports.
for boot drive, i started out with raid5 hdd. later i switched to ssd raid1 and never looked back
Interesting to hear you switched to RAID 1 SSD, I mentioned doing this, I was thinking more along the lines of saving a drive spinning as I don't need the speed. Why did you make the move?
The reason i don't recommend anything below 500gb, is because of TBW endurance.
I looked up TBW's on SSD's before purchasing the Ironwolf 125 series and these have some of the highest. The 'Ratio's for TBW', Mean time to failure and iops are all identical throughout the range. Given my system drive is already under 100GB I deduced that 250GB was sufficient, especially with their controller their 'Actual on chip vs Advertised' storage and I was going to give it another 20% overprovision, just because i wouldn't be using anywhere near that space anyway.
for ssds 250 and 120gb are not great deals. You can get 500gb and 1tb TLC ssds for the cheap now
Cost ratio was worth it in this instance, the larger drives seem to be being bought up by scalpers and Chia miners. I don't need a large system drive anyway
between m.2 sata and m.2 nvme, always go for the m.2 nvme since they are similarly priced but the later can outperform the sata
Yes, totally agreed, M.2 NVME is the way to go where you can. I use them in other systems in the home. Unfortunately the 1282 is SATA only.
Sorry i don't play minecraft. how exactly does this work? who is going to have access?
The minecraft server is internal lan only and just for the kids.
So what do you think then, leave it as I was going to?
With the only adjustment being SSD the System drive and get another to Raid 1 it for failure?
What's your experience with SSD Caching?
I did have the kingston SSD 120GB as read only cache, but whilst in theory it should have sped some drives up (the old ones as an e.g.) the whole system slowed down while doing data transfers
Removing it, whilst eating up a lot more CPU resources (72-85% average but would peak at 99%; while copying multiple folders over network and pool to pool simultaneously) I went from average 12MB/s to 40+MB/s per pool to pool and pool to Lan, with the Exos drive pool reads going from 42-60MB/s to 120-160MB/s.
So theory is not showing the same as real world experience, which is why I am grateful for any advice
Thanks
or spare bays for another ssd)
