Hi,

I am currently running OMV on a system with a system SSD and a 5-HDD Snapraid array. Since the disks are filling up, I want to extend the storage with another 5-disk pool of Western Digital Ultrastar DC HC550 18TB disks. I could squeeze all 10 HDDs into the current case, but then there would be almost no space in between for ventilation. So I decided to buy a new case, and my favourite is the Fractal Design Meshify 2. In addition to gaps between the individual disks, the HDD mounts have some vibration dampening, which should also improve disk longevity. (A cheaper alternative would be the Aerocool Cipher, but here the disks are closer to each other and there is no vibration dampening.)

Are there any experiences regarding one of these cases or alternative cases capable of holding 10 HDDs? One restriction: Since the Ultrastar doesn't have any screw holes in the middle position, I can't use cases which rely on these screw positions, like the Fractal Node 804.

Using two SATA controllers with 4 ports each shouldn't pose a problem, right?

Secondly, once I'm at it, I would also like to move the OS (OMV) to a larger and newer SSD. What is the easiest way to do this?

Any help is appreciated!

Zitat von ryecoaaron

Nope. I've used three with 8 ports each.

Wow, 24 disks... That's a bit out of my league!

Zitat

Clone the old to the new with Clonezilla.

Thanks for the pointer! Looks fairly straigtforward... So I boot the NAS from the Clonezilla USB stick, clone the system disk, and reboot, right?

Hi again,

since I also had some performance issues recently, I'm now going for a larger upgrade.

I am currently running OMV on the following system:

- Athlon II X3 450

- 4 GB RAM

- Snapraid / Mergerfs Array of 4+1 HGST 8TB Disks

My favourites for the upgrade are:

- ASRock N100M --- this laptop processor seems to be more powerful than the available Celerons J4125 or J5040, but less power-hungry and at (roughly) the same price

- 16GB Kingston value ram

- 240 GB Transcend M.2 system drive

- 4+1 18TB Western Digital Ultrastar DC HC550

- keep existing 4+1 8TB array

I'm mainly using it for SMB, with a little bit of Docker on top (maybe Duplicati in the future for external backup), but no VMs or other fancy stuff.

My questions are:

- are there any known incompatibilities for my components?

- I think the new system should have plenty of of power for my requirements, right?

- Funny enough, the biggest problem seems to be connecting all the disks. Many boards have only 2 SATA ports, others have only one PCI slot, but SATA controllers with more than 4 ports cost over 100 Euros, more than many Mainboards including CPU! So I'm going with 2 controllers with 4 ports each, plus two onboard ports. This also means that I have to use an M2 module as system disk, but what the heck.

Thanks for the replies!

Zitat von chente

That plaque is, as they say, from last month. Recent hardware in Linux is unknown, whether it works or not depends largely on the manufacturer's concern for providing drivers. In any case, you probably need a recent kernel if you don't want to install drivers manually.

How would I do this precisely? Install OMV using the old mainboard, install the new kernel via backports, and then switch to the new board?

Anyway, there are mixed reports about the N100 and OMV, sometimes it seems to work without major problems ( RE: Can't get Alder Lake-N100 iGPU to work ), sometimes it doesn't ( Iso loaded 6.24 and no started the iso ).

I suppose a new release of OMV based on bookworm is not just around the corner? That would make things easier.

Zitat

You can always install OMV on a USB flash drive and you will have a free SATA port for something else. In this case don't forget to install openmediavault-flashmemory to protect the flash drive against excessive writes.

That's why I'm planning to use an M.2 system disk. The board has an M.2 connector, I won't waste a usb port for the system disk.

Zitat von ryecoaaron

Look at an IBM M1015 or Dell H310 on eBay. They can be flashed with LSI IT mode firmware and are rebadged LSI cards (good).

I will look into that. Additionally, I would need two cables with 4 sata connectors, right?

Zitat von olduser

A few months ago I bought 2 unas 810a cases. They are ~250usd a piece. If you use a itx or flex board, it can technically fit 2 pcie cards and 10 drives.

If you just want to extend with a DAS and have a drill, old Shuttle k45 will fit 8 drives along with a fan and PSU. I mention this because it's a ridiculously easy case mod.

I think that meshify you picked is a good choice if you're just want to upgrade without buying hardwae.

Thanks for the suggestions, but I really prefer big tower cases, they make installation, modification and ventilation so much easier. I had a shuttle barebone before, and it's such a pain to take the whole thing completely apart every time I want to change something...

Zitat von chente

Don't expect it before 2024.

I expected something like that based on the previous release dates. OK, that settles that.

Zitat von chente

Another way may be to install the latest version of Debian 11 and then install OMV on top of it.

What concerns me about this path is that I might install some clutter that's default for debian but not required for OMV, or that there might be some configuration settings that might lead to problems later on. Basically, I don't know how heavily Debian is adapted to OMV in the OMV installation images, and how any differences between "OMV" and "Debian standard" configuration will affect system reliability.

Zitat von Sean

That would make things easier.

Zitat von ryecoaaron

How? The kernel on bookworm is the same as the bullseye backports kernel - both 6.1.

Easier in terms of installation and compatibility with future updates. My installation is 6 years old now, and of course in the beginning I made some mistakes, fixed them later on, tried out a few things, and gave them up later on. As a result, none of the major version updates went without problems, and most recently, when I switched to docker-compose, I also had to ask for help here. (You might remember )

So my hope is to minimise future problems with an out-of-the-box installation (which is also why I changed my mind about cloning the existing system). So I will do whatever brings me closest to that. If it's a Debian 12 installation with OMV afterwards - fine, if it's an OMV 6 installation with backports, also fine.

Zitat von macom

No problem if you follow the guides.

https://wiki.omv-extras.org/do…6:alternate_amd64_install

Thanks! I'll follow that way then.

OK, I have received the parts now, and just out of curiosity, I tried to install the standard OMV6-distribution, and it went smoothly. The components are:

- ASRock N100M motherboard

- 16GB Crucial RAM

- 500GB Samsung M2 SSD for the OS

- Syba SI-PEX40064 4 Port SATA III Controller

- 5x Western Digital Ultrastar DC HC550 18TB

- 400W be quiet Power Supply

My troubles began when I added the second Syba controller and the 5 HGST 8TB disks from the old system: The disks were detected, but the network became "unreachable". I suspected a driver issue with the kernel, so I installed the backports kernel, I now have "6.1.0-0.deb11.7-amd64", which is the newest one available for bullseye (if I'm not mistaken). The problem persisted.

I played around a bit with the configuration, even suspected a power issue because the system worked when both controllers were connected, but some of the disks were not connected to the PSU. (But that wasn't it, when I connected all drives to the PSU but removed one of the controllers, it also worked.) It also works if both controllers are inserted, but some SATA ports are not connected.

I have a suspicion that one of the two controllers might be faulty, but I haven't been able to make sure of it, and before I buy a new one (or switch to an 8x LSI controller as Aaron suggested) I want to make sure that there is no other issue I'm not seeing yet.

In any case, losing the network after connecting an HDD seems weird to me.

installed kernel 6.2.16-4, rebooted -> network is unreachable.