NASLite Network Attached Storage

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PostPosted: Sat Sep 06, 2008 2:26 pm 
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Location: Belgium
Hey guys

I'm in the middle of a hardware upgrade for my nas
new mainboard, nice sata drive......

I also decided to change my Raid 5 config
I have a LSI 511 4 channel IDE raid card
I had it setup with 4 drives, raid 5, 3 drives + 1 hotspare array
Changed that to 4 drives, raid 5, no hotspare, all drives in use

I use the raid array as the rsync drive
So everything from the 750 GB drive is copied to the raid5

I'm going to use a 1.0TB sata drive now
the new mobo has only 1 IDE chanel, whitch I use with the CF-IDE adapter
So I can't copy directly to the new sata drive from the ide drive
but that's ok, I will do that with rsync ( syncing from the raid that is)
This is for later

Now I'm in the process of copying of about 650Gb to the "new" array
I am doing this manualy
The reason: there is 1 folder on my drive that I don't need anymore, but cannot remove.
That folder was created when I did a drive recovery for a friend with "get data back"
There was a damaged cluster on his drive and it seems like it copied that garbled data to the disc.
No big deal
I just select the folders I want and drag/drop them to the "new" array
rip out the 750 GB drive
install the 1 TB drive, format and mount
setup rsync
leave it overnight to sync
when the sync completes, reverse the sync so the raid array will be the sync drive

1 problem
copying takes forever

Image

As you can see I drilled down to the Shares share and copy in there
There shouldn't be any network activity and copying should be disk to disk
But I do get heaps of network traffic and speeds are 1 - 2MB/s

the screenshot is taken on a little epia board running xubuntu, connected directly with a crosscable to the nas
there is not a lot of cpu action (look at the green bar in the top right), so it's not the cpu that' slowing this down
both computers have a 100mb/s networkcard so 10MB/s should be possible, but the data shouldn't travel over the network in the first place
If I connect the nas via the switch to my normal XP machine I get the same results: network traffic and slow speeds
I think I'm copying for 2 days now and it still isn't finished

What am I doing wrong?


Last edited by totalchaos on Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:07 pm 
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Joined: Fri Feb 02, 2007 5:04 pm
Posts: 109
Location: Belgium
Hmmmmm

Think I got it
There's a difference between ´move´ and ´copy´

Not sure why I used copy, wanted to be certain I kept a copy of my files I think (just a little paranoid)


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PostPosted: Sun Sep 07, 2008 3:14 am 
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Joined: Sun Apr 02, 2006 9:05 pm
Posts: 1688
Location: Up State NY in the USA!!!!
I prefer to do a copy and then go back and delete from the source after I am sure the copy went OK. In the past I have been bitten with moves, just a personal preference I guess.

As far as slow copies, I have in the past had issues with certain hardware not running as fast as it should or could. I can only guess that this is the result of a number of hardware, firmware, and software factors coming together in a less than harmonious way. My current setup works very well indeed, most transfers and copies happen at more than 30MB/sec. I have been through about 10 different machines to get to this point with a number of variations on some trying to tune the hardware for better performance. Some modest hardware performs very well, in other cases high end hardware was hardly usable. It's seems to be a crap shoot at this point. Tony and Ralph are not to blame since every MB, NIC, and drive interface card have a BIOS/Firmware built in. There is just to much variation to cover unless you're MicroShaft. The fact that it does so well on such a diverse range of hardware is quite a feat in it's self I think. You may need to try another MB/processor combo at this point.

Mike


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PostPosted: Mon Sep 08, 2008 5:55 pm 
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Joined: Fri Feb 02, 2007 5:04 pm
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Location: Belgium
Well, she's back in action
Upgraded and ready for another couple of years

I'm going to stick with the Intel board for the moment, looks like a solid trooper

Still need to go gigabit on the NIC side, but that will be something for the future


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PostPosted: Mon Sep 08, 2008 6:36 pm 
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Location: Up State NY in the USA!!!!
Gigabit is very cheap to go now with switches being had for less than $50.00 US. I see gigabit NICs on Ebay for cheap as well with the Intel and 3Com cards going for around $20.00 US. or so.

Mike


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PostPosted: Thu Sep 11, 2008 4:03 pm 
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Joined: Fri Feb 02, 2007 5:04 pm
Posts: 109
Location: Belgium
Mike, (or anybody else)

is this any good ?

INTEL PRO1000 MT (Intel 82541PI Gigabit Controller)
I think it is

First I was going to make the step to gigabit when naslite supported pci-e
then I would get a pci-e gigabit nic

but if it's that cheap, why wait
I still got a regular pci slot free


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PostPosted: Thu Sep 11, 2008 4:45 pm 
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Joined: Fri Jan 12, 2007 4:27 am
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Location: Scotland
A colleague of mine has used a Pro1000 MT with some success - I have a Pro1000 GT which also worked really well.


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PostPosted: Thu Sep 11, 2008 8:27 pm 
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Location: Up State NY in the USA!!!!
You just about can't go wrong with any of the Intel Gigabit cards. I do believe that the card is supported by NL. You will likely not notice any difference between a PCI based NIC and a PCI-e NIC. If you were really hammering on the box and had a RAID card or two then maybe it might be a concern but you should get great performance from that setup regardless.

Mike


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PostPosted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 11:13 am 
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Joined: Fri Feb 02, 2007 5:04 pm
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Location: Belgium
All the work is done
Replaced 1 cable
Switches are in place
Gigabit NIC (Intel Pro 1000MT) in the server

and the results:

C:\Documents and Settings\Tim\Bureaublad\diskWriggler-1.0.1.win32\diskWriggler-1
.0.1.win32>diskwriggler -NTSC -C -t -n 1000 -o z:\
Frame Resolution : 720 x 486
Bytes / Pixel : 2,00 (packed) (8 bit, 4:2:2 sampling)
Frame Size : 699,840 bytes
File Type : All frames in one container file (699,840,000 bytes).

Writing 1000 x 699840 byte frames into file z:\/framestream.dat
431 frames in 5,00 secs ==> 86,20 FPS (57,53 MB/s)
466 frames in 5,00 secs ==> 93,20 FPS (62,20 MB/s)
103 frames in 1,06 secs ==> 96,94 FPS (64,70 MB/s)

Write Summary : 1000.00 frames in 11,06 secs
: 86,20(min) 90,40(avg) 96,94(max) FPS
: 57,53(min) 60,33(avg) 64,70(max) MB/s

Reading 1000 x 699840 byte frames from file z:\/framestream.dat
243 frames in 5,00 secs ==> 48,60 FPS (32,44 MB/s)
256 frames in 5,02 secs ==> 51,04 FPS (34,07 MB/s)
247 frames in 5,00 secs ==> 49,40 FPS (32,97 MB/s)
248 frames in 5,02 secs ==> 49,45 FPS (33,00 MB/s)
6 frames in 0,13 secs ==> 48,00 FPS (32,04 MB/s)

Read Summary : 1000.00 frames in 20,16 secs
: 48,00(min) 49,61(avg) 51,04(max) FPS
: 32,04(min) 33,11(avg) 34,07(max) MB/s

60MB/s Write & 30MB/s read = Me Pleased :mrgreen:


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PostPosted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 12:25 pm 
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Joined: Sun Apr 02, 2006 9:05 pm
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Location: Up State NY in the USA!!!!
See, told you so! Glad it worked out.

I have a LSI 4i card and am going to be putting it in my machine soon so I can't wait to see how it performs. Just waiting on some new software before going through all the work if installing it and the drives. Kill two birds or more with one stone is my motto.

Mike


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PostPosted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 2:01 pm 
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Joined: Fri Feb 02, 2007 5:04 pm
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Location: Belgium
Thanks for the support Mike :wink:


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PostPosted: Fri Nov 07, 2008 5:30 pm 
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Joined: Tue Oct 28, 2008 12:20 pm
Posts: 45
Totalchaos,
What did you have to do to get NAslite to see your array on the LSI card? I have the same card and plan on doing a raid5 with 3x500gb but Naslite will not recognize my drives when they are on the array. Could you give me some pointers since it looks like you have it working.

Thanks for your time.


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PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 6:27 pm 
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Joined: Fri Feb 02, 2007 5:04 pm
Posts: 109
Location: Belgium
joeyoung25 wrote:
Totalchaos,
What did you have to do to get NAslite to see your array on the LSI card? I have the same card and plan on doing a raid5 with 3x500gb but Naslite will not recognize my drives when they are on the array. Could you give me some pointers since it looks like you have it working.

Thanks for your time.




Nothing Realy
It all works out of the box

Did you get into the raid card's bios (to setup the array)?
First you create and initialise an array so Naslite will see a logical volume (check your syslog)
That logical volume can be formatted and used by naslite
the card itself is supported under naslite

I followed this helpfull article
the complete array setup is explained starting at page 5


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