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Out of curiosity, which 'real' solutions did you try before moving to unRAID?
Just went to look again, and even better, the cache is a write cache. I just assumed it was for reads since a device filling that role would normally be a log disk, not a cache. (Can you tell it's been a while since I looked at it?  )
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skarsol Wrote:Out of curiosity, which 'real' solutions did you try before moving to unRAID?
Just went to look again, and even better, the cache is a write cache. I just assumed it was for reads since a device filling that role would normally be a log disk, not a cache. (Can you tell it's been a while since I looked at it? ) well, I switched to unRAID in early 2010, and I haven't looked at anything newer... so, most of my previous solutions would probably be somewhat out of date by today's standards...
first there was the dell poweredge (I think? what were their beefy 2000 era servers called?) 450Mgz dual Xeon's!!! either 8 or 16G of ram (a ton for its day.. like PC's were still in the 1G range at that point in time...) dual redundant everything...
the storage was an external 8 bay fiber channel (remember Fiber Channel? it was suppose to take over the world they said...) connected scsi array filled with 22 or 27 GB 15K RPM scsi drives in RAID5
this was blazingly fast... the writes were probably much faster than my current unraid... reads are probably similar...
only 2 real issues, 8x 20 something GB in a raid 5 is only like 200GB... and upgrading capacity was cost prohibitive...
also, COMED (My electric provider) REALLY REALLY liked me... I never really measured the watts, because I really did not want to know...
Lights would dim as the array came online...
then moved to a couple of ReadyNAS's... despite being much newer, those were actually a bit slower than the old Dell... upgrading was cheaper, but you needed to replace 4 drives at once and they all needed to be the same size... so still not cost effective... although, COMED was less happy...
at some point during that time frame, I played with freenas... decided it wasn't worth the pain...
then tried unRAID, while not all that fast per se, it fit all my needs... and now that they have the VM & docker's all built in, it has replaced everything ...
yea, the cache is suppose to be used for just the writes, as unRAID's parity scheme is rather slow...
I am not currently caching any writes, as it is not necessary for my usage pattern, you can set the cache up on a per share basis...
I just use the cache drive for a VM/Docker storage area...
NOTE: As one wise professional something once stated, I am ignorant & childish, with a mindset comparable to 9/11 troofers and wackjob conspiracy theorists. so don't take anything I say as advice...
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skarsol Wrote:Out of curiosity, which 'real' solutions did you try before moving to unRAID? also, it is probably worth pointing out that my 'real' is from the perspective of home use only...
perspective matters here as home use is not at all even similar to a corporate IT type setting...
well, I guess, they could be similar if the home in question belonged to a corporate IT guy...
but that is not me, I want a box I can turn on and (mostly) forget about...
NOTE: As one wise professional something once stated, I am ignorant & childish, with a mindset comparable to 9/11 troofers and wackjob conspiracy theorists. so don't take anything I say as advice...
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Well right, that's why I was asking. When someone says 'real', I'm thinking enterprise level, so I was curious which tech you brought home.
Personally, I went from a big SuperMicro case with a bunch of hot swap disks (literally hot...) and now have a FreeBSD server accessing multiple 4 drive USB enclosures and using ZFS. Since that's what I use at the day job (well, with Solaris instead of FreeBSD, and certainly not using USB), I was way more comfortable with that than unRAID's vague promises (at the time) and magic sauce. 
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well, technically, my Dell was "Enterprise Level" back in it's day... I got it for free from an enterprise that upgraded...
and hey, 200GB of mass storage was a lot! (well, it was back then... I am up to 20TB now...)
skarsol Wrote:I was way more comfortable with that than unRAID's vague promises (at the time) and magic sauce. oddly enough, I felt the same way about ZFS...
but then I am not in or even adjacent to IT...
and unRAID seems to work just fine for me, I have never had a drive fail, but I have upgraded smaller drives to bigger drives just by stopping the array, remove small disk, replace with big disk, start array and it automatically does it's rebuild thing... never lost any array data...
my unRAID box #1 is in a supermicro SAS2 case... drives seem cool enough... don't run any hotter than my unRAID #2 box in a Norco...
but then, most drives are sleeping/spun down most of the time...
I guess that makes COMED sad, but hey, it helps with the heat...
NOTE: As one wise professional something once stated, I am ignorant & childish, with a mindset comparable to 9/11 troofers and wackjob conspiracy theorists. so don't take anything I say as advice...
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I guess it all comes down to what you know and what you're comfortable with. Especially in IT, there's like 1000 ways to implement any given thing.
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SWL likes things that just work. Well, kinda sorta just work. Well, things that make him feel good by advertising they just work and they kinda sorta do for a while and then they don't and it hurts more than it helps.
Whiskey, SWL likes whiskey.
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That means so little coming from a tequila guy like IVB... ;-)
But I really do like things that just work...
Makes life do much simpler...
Not a big whisky fan though...
While whiskey does in fact "just work", there can be consequences...
I mostly just stick to beer these days...
NOTE: As one wise professional something once stated, I am ignorant & childish, with a mindset comparable to 9/11 troofers and wackjob conspiracy theorists. so don't take anything I say as advice...
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I like whiskey too! And tequila. And tonight was gin&tonic. Beers were last night. Saturday was mezcal though.
Just like home automation technologies, I end up doing 3 times as many different things as most folks. Spice is the variety of life. Wait not thats not the saying. Life is the spice of variety. Ugh. I'll have another G&T, it'll come to me...
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IVB Wrote:I like whiskey too! And tequila. And tonight was gin&tonic. Beers were last night. Saturday was mezcal though.
Just like home automation technologies, I end up doing 3 times as many different things as most folks. Spice is the variety of life. Wait not thats not the saying. Life is the spice of variety. Ugh. I'll have another G&T, it'll come to me... been hitting the sauce early these days huh?
NOTE: As one wise professional something once stated, I am ignorant & childish, with a mindset comparable to 9/11 troofers and wackjob conspiracy theorists. so don't take anything I say as advice...
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