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A modular, extensible DIY NAS

blog.georgovassilis.com

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Re: A modular, extensible DIY NAS

#71

Post by shock »

vbezhenar wrote: post #24
justoreply wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is true: I have an almost silent gen8 and I'm not using the built-in raid

I checked with iLO and fan rotates at much lower speed with RAID configuration. I would be happy to run it without RAID, but it's too loud. I've found that solution on homeservers forum, so I guess, I'm not the only one.

I think there's been some work on the fan speen in recent BIOS/iLO versions. AFAIK HP currently recommend you put the controller in AHCI mode for use with linux nowadays. I haven't seen versions of their Linux fake-raid driver for a few years now. I think it's been retired.

Another issue I've seen people report as a reason for the increased fan speed were hdds which didn't report temperature properly to the controller so the controller didn't know whether the drives were cool or hot.

What BIOS/iLO versions are you running?

Re: A modular, extensible DIY NAS

#72

Post by shock »

ggeorgovassilis wrote: post #63
vbezhenar wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I checked with iLO and fan rotates at much lower speed with RAID configuration. I would be happy to run it without RAID, but it's too loud. I've found that solution on homeservers forum, so I guess, I'm not the only one.

I think they fixed that in a firmware upgrade.

Can you please post(or send me over email) your BIOS/iLO versions? I plan do do a NAS build with a Gen8 and it would greatly help me to know what versions don't have the fan noise issue. Thank you in advance!

Re: A modular, extensible DIY NAS

#73

Post by selfhoster11 »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #4

> I hear and read conflicting testimonies about ZFS which supposedly handles data corruption better and will give it a try at some point. For now, I use md5sum to create and verify checksums of my backup .tar.gz archives and parchive to create error recovery files. I’ve written about parchive before and remain to this day a dedicated fan. I’m very surprised you went through the trouble of building such an amazing NAS…

ZFS adds complexity and licensing issues into the mix. parchive is a good way to separate different layers of concerns to achieve similar end point.

Re: A modular, extensible DIY NAS

#74

Post by vetinari »

ggeorgovassilis wrote: post #61
mrb wrote: post #33

Been building DIY NAS servers for 15 years for my personal use. ZFS with initially OpenSolaris, then FreeBSD. Typically 5 to 7 drives in raidz2. I found it very strange the guy is happy with & measured 100 Mbps throughput over the network. Any 2+ drive NAS from the last 5 years should be able to saturate a 1Gbps link.

Well, there is also the LUKS encryption overhead which caps transfer rates from the RAID. I also run boinc (giving back to the community) which limits available CPU.

LUKS is capable of using AES-NI, and most CPUs are faster at AES-NI than two-lane NVMe drives at delivering that data. It should be absolutely no problem with SATA.

Re: A modular, extensible DIY NAS

#75

Post by rkagerer »

anilakar wrote: post #36

I've relied on hardware RAID over one hardware failure, for the first and last time. We were running some services on a stack of older Dell servers with mostly identical hardware. The RAID controller and mainboard on one of them let the magic smoke out. We (a sysadmin team of three) promptly decided to move the RAID array to another unused server in the stack in order to avoid a lengthy reinstall and manual restoring…

An untested disaster recovery or backup plan is a bad plan. Sorry you had to learn that the hard way.

Agreed that identical or confirmed working spare components are important.

I've migrated RAID arrays through several generations of Areca cards successfully and even tested back and forth between models. I like them.

Also remember RAID is not backup; keep a second copy of your data around (offsite if you're serious).

Re: A modular, extensible DIY NAS

#77

Post by vbezhenar »

shock wrote: post #71
vbezhenar wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I checked with iLO and fan rotates at much lower speed with RAID configuration. I would be happy to run it without RAID, but it's too loud. I've found that solution on homeservers forum, so I guess, I'm not the only one.

I think there's been some work on the fan speen in recent BIOS/iLO versions. AFAIK HP currently recommend you put the controller in AHCI mode for use with linux nowadays. I haven't seen versions of their Linux fake-raid driver for a few years now. I think it's been retired. Another issue I've seen people report as a reason for the increased fan speed were hdds which didn't report temperature properly to the controlle…

My BIOS is J06 04/04/2019, iLO firmware 2.70 May 07 2019.

Latest B120i driver was released at 30 Apr 2020. I don't think it's retired yet, but they don't support RHEL 8, so I'm forced to stay on RHEL 7.

I can see that iLO firmware is not latest, but it's BIOS who's responsible for fan speed control and I think that I'm running latest BIOS.

That's not really about BIOS versions. When HDD runs under B120i fakeraid mode, server is aware about HDD temperature which is displayed in iLO. As long as this temperature is low, fans stay low. When HDD runs under AHCI mode, server is not aware about HDD temperature anymore, so it uses high fan speed to ensure that cooling is good enough even if drives are hot. That's how I interpret this whole situation.

Re: A modular, extensible DIY NAS

#78

Post by pabs3 »

anilakar wrote: post #36

I've relied on hardware RAID over one hardware failure, for the first and last time. We were running some services on a stack of older Dell servers with mostly identical hardware. The RAID controller and mainboard on one of them let the magic smoke out. We (a sysadmin team of three) promptly decided to move the RAID array to another unused server in the stack in order to avoid a lengthy reinstall and manual restoring…

IIRC the Linux kernel RAID infrastructure supports various on-disk data structures generated by various hardware RAID controllers, so probably it would be easier to recover from your situation in 2020.

Re: A modular, extensible DIY NAS

#79

Post by shock »

vbezhenar wrote: post #77
shock wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's been some work on the fan speen in recent BIOS/iLO versions. AFAIK HP currently recommend you put the controller in AHCI mode for use with linux nowadays. I haven't seen versions of their Linux fake-raid driver for a few years now. I think it's been retired. Another issue I've seen people report as a reason for the increased fan speed were hdds which didn't report temperature properly to the controlle…

My BIOS is J06 04/04/2019, iLO firmware 2.70 May 07 2019. Latest B120i driver was released at 30 Apr 2020. I don't think it's retired yet, but they don't support RHEL 8, so I'm forced to stay on RHEL 7. I can see that iLO firmware is not latest, but it's BIOS who's responsible for fan speed control and I think that I'm running latest BIOS. That's not really about BIOS versions. When HDD runs under B120i fakeraid mode…

> Latest B120i driver was released at 30 Apr 2020. I don't think it's retired yet

Ok, I might have misunderstood the info posted at: http://downloads.linux.hpe.com/SDR/project/ubuntu-hpdsa/ which states: "NOTICE! The hpdsa driver is no longer being developed past the versions indicated. Do not upgrade the Ubuntu kernel or try to use this binary driver with Xenial. If you have a B-series Smart Array, it is advised to use the Linux md (software raid) driver, or upgrade to an H or P series hardware-based host bus adapter."

I thought the hpdsa driver was the same across distros, not unique to Ubuntu. Based on what you're telling me it seems that only the Ubuntu version was discontinued.

Re: A modular, extensible DIY NAS

#80

Post by shock »

hestefisk wrote: post #65
shock wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you can't easily change the size of the disks one at a time. How would you migrate from 4 x 4TB to 4 x 6TB disks by buying one disk at a time?

You gradually replace one disk at a time, resilver then repeat. ZFS automates most or all the work mentioned in this article and it comes with built-in bitrot detection. Btw I have run a NAS similar to this machine for 6 years now using FreeNAS. It’s awesome.

So if I have 4x4TB drives and switch a drive so it's now 3x4TB + 1x6TB, and do the resilver, will the ZFS capacity be increased by 2TB?
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