Advice for an Upgrade

  • Hi


    Been a long time OMV user and the system has been working really well with the current hardware - thanks to @tekkb , @ryecoaaron and @davidh2k for the advice on that one. The NAS is primarily a streaming box for the SMART TV's, Tablets, Laptops and game consoles in the house. Family of five and we keep getting more and more devices - got to love tech.


    My current set up is a ASRock Z87 PRO3 with 4GB DDR3 G-Skill Ripjaws and the following HDD /SSD's

    • 30 SDD for the OS
    • 3 x 2TB Western Digital Reds in RAID 5
    • 1 x 2TB Western Digital Green
    • 1 x 1TB Samsung

    The OMV share for Virtual Box is on the RAID and I've found it been eating up valuable space for storing those TV Shows and I'd like the applications to have their own drive. So I've been planning to add a few more drives and then retire the Western Digital Green and 1TB Samsung drives as they had been left over from an earlier build and most probably at the end of their lifespan 8|

    Currently have budget of £350ish for 3 new western digital reds (although I notice on this thread@tinh_x7 is advising not to use them). Also have 256 GIG SSD knocking about. Going to use a Syba SATA III 4 Port PCI-e x1 Controller Card for a few more ports.


    So my thinking is this:


    Motherboard

    • 30 SDD for the OS
    • 3 x 2TB Western Digital Reds in RAID 5 for photos, documents and music
    • 1 x 2TB Western Green - scheduled for retirement
    • 1 x 1TB Samsung


    Controller Card


    • 3 x 3TB Western Digitals
    • 1 x 256 Gig SSD for application



    Finally to my questions


    • Could / should I remove the 30 gig SDD and then split the 256 gig SSD into OS and then Application partition, freeing up a port
    • Is the controller card ok
    • 3 x Western Digital 3TB or 2 x Western Digital 4TB


    Any advice or thoughts welcome :)

  • First of all, what do you need RAID for ? RAID is for high availability, not backup. It means that if a drive fails, you can keep on working. Is that a strong requirement for a media server ? How much storage space do you need for your VMs ? Is high availability required for those too ?


    If you drop the high availability requirement, while maintaining data redundancy, you can switch to SnapRAID. The advantage of SnapRAID is that it is more flexible than RAID 5. You can mix drives of all sizes. One drive is reserved for parity data and it has to be bigger or equal to the largest data drive. They recommend 1 parity drive for 3 data drives. This means that just by reorganizing your current setup, for example, you could pool all your drives together into a single 3TB+3TB+2TB+1TB (data drives) + 3TB (parity) to have a 9TB SnapRAID array for your media files. This would leave you with two 2TB that could make a RAID1 array for your VMs.


    Again, it all depends on what your actual storage and availability requirements are.

  • First of all, what do you need RAID for ? RAID is for high availability, not backup. It means that if a drive fails, you can keep on working. Is that a strong requirement for a media server ? How much storage space do you need for your VMs ? Is high availability required for those too ?


    If you drop the high availability requirement, while maintaining data redundancy, you can switch to SnapRAID. The advantage of SnapRAID is that it is more flexible than RAID 5. You can mix drives of all sizes. One drive is reserved for parity data and it has to be bigger or equal to the largest data drive. They recommend 1 parity drive for 3 data drives. This means that just by reorganizing your current setup, for example, you could pool all your drives together into a single 3TB+3TB+2TB+1TB (data drives) + 3TB (parity) to have a 9TB SnapRAID array. This would leave you with two 2TB that could make a RAID1 array for your VMs.


    Again, it all depends on what your actual storage and availability requirements are.


    if you are so strapped for ports why not this card .
    also I am not sure it would be easy yo split the OS drive to use it for both OS and data.
    OMV install ISO will not allow you to do this. OMV install uses the whole drive by default.
    so why not get a better expansion card and have a dedicated OS drive. with additional 8 ports
    you can even have a raided OS setup (although you will have to do the install differently but still possible.)
    this would give you high availability system setup.


    IMHO go with snapRaid in raid-6 setup (2 parity)



    actually the recommendation is 1xP for every 4 disk if raid-5, 2xP for more disks and raid-6 or essentially one drive for every 7 data drives ,see table below


    the only hard requirement is that Parity disk MUST be larger than any data disk in a set.



    1/Single Parity/RAID52 - 4
    2/Double Parity/RAID65 - 14
    3/Triple Parity15 - 21
    4/Quad Parity22 - 28
    5/Penta Parity29 - 35
    6/Hexa Parity36 - 42

    omv 3.0.56 erasmus | 64 bit | 4.7 backport kernel
    SM-SC846(24 bay)| H8DME-2 |2x AMD Opteron Hex Core 2431 @ 2.4Ghz |49GB RAM
    PSU: Silencer 760 Watt ATX Power Supply
    IPMI |3xSAT2-MV8 PCI-X |4 NIC : 2x Realteck + 1 Intel Pro Dual port PCI-e card
    OS on 2×120 SSD in RAID-1 |
    DATA: 3x3T| 4x2T | 2x1T

  • Thanks @Nibb31


    Well you ask a really good question, and I must admit that I was using the RAID as part of my back up strategy for the music, documents and photos. These are then copied to an external HDD, cloud storage and when I remember burned to a DVD - too be honest that's not often.


    Space for the VM can be a few 100 Meg as the most as it's mostly muck around stuff, bring it up break it and then start again rather than a structure test thing.


    Certainly have to say that my NAS had started as a multiple purpose file store, VM and streaming box and become predominately a streaming media server so it makes sense to move to SNAP RAID :thumbup:


    @vl1969 i really like that SATA card as allows for the the addition of more drives at a later point - 6 on the motherboard and 8 on the card. The NAS is housed in a Fractal Design R4, which give 8 bays plus two converted 5.25 bays, so could squeeze in 10 drives, so it might be over kill :P unless i move to a different case?


    So based on your the comments I think this might be in order



    SATADriveTypeComment
    Motherboard 030 Gig SSDOpen Media Vault
    Motherboard 1256 Gig SSDApplications and VM's
    Motherboard 22TB Western Digital RedSNAP RAID
    Motherboard 32TB Western Digital RedSNAP RAID
    Motherboard 42TB Western Digital RedSNAP RAID
    Motherboard 52TB Western Digital GreenSNAP RAIDWill retire this in the future and swap it for Western Digital Red
    PCIe 03TB Western Digital RedSNAP RAIDParity Drive if single
    PCIe 13TB Western Digital RedSNAP RAIDParity Drive if double (i think)
    PCIe 23TB Western Digital RedSNAP RAID
    PCIe 31TB SamsungRetire



    So are these math correct ?(


    Single Parity: 2+2+2+2+3+3 = 14 TB?? Not advised
    Double: 2+2+2+2+3 = 11TB better option?

  • well not exactly, I am not sure where are you, but there might be option to use the 2 converted 5.25 bays to house at least 3 3.5 drives, I have seen the convertion cages like that
    at hte very least you can convert a single 5.25 bay to hold 2 2.5 drives so you can use that for RAID-1 System setup.
    so that would be 2 + 9 =11 drives.


    or 2xSSD in one bay for OS raid-1
    + 2xSSD in second bay for Applicaiton Raid-1
    +8 drives for data on snapraid = 12 drives


    that would give you 14TB on single parity Or 11TB on double parity
    and still leave you 2 open SATA port just in case


    ;-P


    and double parity is better as it allows for at least 2 drives to fail with almost no data loss unless one drive is the parity drive.
    other than that looks ok.

    omv 3.0.56 erasmus | 64 bit | 4.7 backport kernel
    SM-SC846(24 bay)| H8DME-2 |2x AMD Opteron Hex Core 2431 @ 2.4Ghz |49GB RAM
    PSU: Silencer 760 Watt ATX Power Supply
    IPMI |3xSAT2-MV8 PCI-X |4 NIC : 2x Realteck + 1 Intel Pro Dual port PCI-e card
    OS on 2×120 SSD in RAID-1 |
    DATA: 3x3T| 4x2T | 2x1T

  • I'm in Leeds, UK if that what your asking.


    I have a couple of the 5.25 to 3.5 trays knocking about so was going to use then but will have a browse to see the 5.25 tray for 2 SSD 8o as jamming another drive in is always good :thumbup:


    Are I'm right that SNAP RAID is really flexible as it's simple to add and remove drives to the array. So could go for the 8 port PCI and 2 x 3 Western Digitals then add another (few) later.


    Have the realisation that I'm a digital hoarder! Since I got the new HD TV everything has gone to 720 or 1080 which is eating us the NAS space :whistling:

  • yes that is what I meant.


    you have things in UK that we here in US don't(or at least no easily obtained) and vice versa.


    I have a couple of 3to4 cages laying around that allow to put 4x3.5 drives into 3 5.25 bays.
    don't need them now as I got a 24 drive SuperMicro box :-).



    yes SnapRaid is flexible but keep in mind that it is not like a regular raid setup. I am not sure how it handles removal of the drive.
    you can add new drive easily though.

    omv 3.0.56 erasmus | 64 bit | 4.7 backport kernel
    SM-SC846(24 bay)| H8DME-2 |2x AMD Opteron Hex Core 2431 @ 2.4Ghz |49GB RAM
    PSU: Silencer 760 Watt ATX Power Supply
    IPMI |3xSAT2-MV8 PCI-X |4 NIC : 2x Realteck + 1 Intel Pro Dual port PCI-e card
    OS on 2×120 SSD in RAID-1 |
    DATA: 3x3T| 4x2T | 2x1T

  • you have things in UK that we here in US don't(or at least no easily obtained) and vice versa.

    I'm sure there is a two way joke there :whistling:


    Ok, looks like I have a plan. Thanks for the advice.


    Going to start looking for the drives and see the cheapest supplier for the WD's Amazon UK £95.99 (124.36USD) / CCL - local store £95.96.

  • I'm sure there is a two way joke there

    I am sure I don't know what you mean by that :P:saint:

    omv 3.0.56 erasmus | 64 bit | 4.7 backport kernel
    SM-SC846(24 bay)| H8DME-2 |2x AMD Opteron Hex Core 2431 @ 2.4Ghz |49GB RAM
    PSU: Silencer 760 Watt ATX Power Supply
    IPMI |3xSAT2-MV8 PCI-X |4 NIC : 2x Realteck + 1 Intel Pro Dual port PCI-e card
    OS on 2×120 SSD in RAID-1 |
    DATA: 3x3T| 4x2T | 2x1T

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    I found one of these Techkoo 4x2.5'' SATA HDD/SSD Mobile Rack HotSwap Backplane Cage for 5.25-Inch Bay

    In case you don't like it or want another one, I have two of these - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Icy-D…=ICY+DOCK+MB324SP-B+4+Bay - work great.

    omv 7.0.4-2 sandworm | 64 bit | 6.5 proxmox kernel

    plugins :: omvextrasorg 7.0 | kvm 7.0.10 | compose 7.1.2 | k8s 7.0-6 | cputemp 7.0 | mergerfs 7.0.3


    omv-extras.org plugins source code and issue tracker - github


    Please try ctrl-shift-R and read this before posting a question.

    Please put your OMV system details in your signature.
    Please don't PM for support... Too many PMs!

  • Yeah like that :) and expect that I'd want another one when it's time to upgrade again :D


    The bay doesn't arrive until the 4th October, so expect that I will have completed setting up the server by then! Last time it took about 45 minutes to get a working server from a fresh install. Got to love OMV - nice and easy........ plus powerful :thumbup:

  • yes SnapRaid is flexible but keep in mind that it is not like a regular raid setup. I am not sure how it handles removal of the drive.


    you can add new drive easily though.

    It handles adding and removing drives pretty well. You just have to run snapraid sync after every major change.


    Be aware that snapraid does not pool drives (well, it can, but not very well), which means that even when they are in a snapraid array, they still appear as individual drives with their own filesystems. To pool the drives, you need to use mergerfs on top of the data drives. This mounts an additional filesystem where all the drives are pooled together. The individual filesystems remain accessible if you need them.

  • So if I want to replace a drive, I pull the one I want out, put new one in and run sync?
    That would rebuild the data thay was on old drive on the new one?
    I thought it was more difficult than that.


    I know adding drive is simple enough.
    Plug-in the new drive and add it to the list. Run sync and scrub.


    Sent from my SGH-T889 using Tapatalk

    omv 3.0.56 erasmus | 64 bit | 4.7 backport kernel
    SM-SC846(24 bay)| H8DME-2 |2x AMD Opteron Hex Core 2431 @ 2.4Ghz |49GB RAM
    PSU: Silencer 760 Watt ATX Power Supply
    IPMI |3xSAT2-MV8 PCI-X |4 NIC : 2x Realteck + 1 Intel Pro Dual port PCI-e card
    OS on 2×120 SSD in RAID-1 |
    DATA: 3x3T| 4x2T | 2x1T

  • That's pretty straight forward. I've been testing the vm and it seems straight forward


    This is fresh install on the new drives.


    - install omv
    - istall omv-extra-plugins
    - Format new drives - is xfs a good choice here
    - install snap raid
    - install onion fs plug in
    - configure snap raid with one parity and 2 data / content
    - set up mergefs with all raid drives
    - create share on the merge pool


    Sent from phone. So poor formatting.


    Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

  • So if I want to replace a drive, I pull the one I want out, put new one in and run sync?
    That would rebuild the data thay was on old drive on the new one?


    I thought it was more difficult than that.

    Actually, you run snapraid fix. Snapraid sync is the command you run every day to update the parity data.



    That's pretty much correct. I don't know what 'onion fs' is though ;) (union fs I presume)


    After installing omv-extras, don't forget to update the backports kernel.


    I'd stick to good old ext4 for the filesystem format. I want to keep my drives as universally readable as possible.

  • Got it.
    Still sounds good


    Sent from my SGH-T889 using Tapatalk

    omv 3.0.56 erasmus | 64 bit | 4.7 backport kernel
    SM-SC846(24 bay)| H8DME-2 |2x AMD Opteron Hex Core 2431 @ 2.4Ghz |49GB RAM
    PSU: Silencer 760 Watt ATX Power Supply
    IPMI |3xSAT2-MV8 PCI-X |4 NIC : 2x Realteck + 1 Intel Pro Dual port PCI-e card
    OS on 2×120 SSD in RAID-1 |
    DATA: 3x3T| 4x2T | 2x1T

  • I'd stick to good old ext4 for the filesystem format. I want to keep my drives as universally readable as possible.

    Ah, yes that's a better idea



    'onion fs' is though (union fs I presume)

    whoops :whistling: yeah my mistake but i'm glad you knew what i meant. :)


    took me a few seconds to work out which folder under /media/ was the the mergefs pool ?( process of elimination














    and this is on my test box - going to be fun with 10 drives connected 8|

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