Any bad experiences with ironwolf 8tb yet?

[Chris Moore]

Note that if the desktop model is the ST8000DM004 it's also an SMR drive, like the Archive drives.

Where does it say that in the documentation?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

 

[Johnnie Black]

Where does it say that in the documentation?

We had this discussion before, SMR is the only way to achieve such an high areal density, and although the documentation for that model still doesn't mention SMR, Seagate has since launched the Archive v3 drives, which do mention SMR, and if you look at the main specs they are all identical, including the same 1203 GB/sq.in areal density.

 

[southwow]

@Stux beat me to the question phase... Are you done adding storage or do you still need to grow more? What is the capacity you see yourself growing to in the next 3 to 5 years?

PS. What kind of chassis are you mounting all these drives in? Would you give a rundown on your hardware?

Chris,
Chassis + Backplane: 846TQ for future SAS3 hopes and dreams, 9 available bays on the front and 4(2x2.5 rear window + 2.2.5 internal) via add-on goodness. I have lots of room... However 8TB 2.5" drives don't exist yet AFAIK... but I could just use the sata cables and stack a few drives loose.

Board + Expander: x10 board with onboard SAS2, reverse breakout to intel 360 expander driving everything. I also have 6 onboard sata HBA ports available (maybe room for 30 drives if I have a few laying loose.

Other stuff: If even more drives are needed, I have 2 open card slots and SAS controllers

Storage Growth Needs:
Spitball calculation, we'll say average size of movie in MKV container is 20GB (blu ray about 30, dvd about 4.5, 4K obviously bigger as well). We have 2000+ currently as well as TV recordings from my old myth system that is now also a plex server. I'd like to consolidate and have enough space for at least 3 more years... so: 3 movies a week * 52 weeks = 156 movies. 156 movies * 20GB = 3 - 4 TB per year (counting other stuff like music and photos). Multiply that by 4 years, maybe 15-20TB. Basically adding a new VDev to my current pool at 8tb... which is kind of how I've been rolling forever now.

With 8's, I'm currently at around 45 TB usage. My current configuration will easily accommodate the growth I need.

Just a thought:
The plex system C2750 Avoton board with a lot of RAM, so it's no slouch. it's Linux, but I have a 10x 5tb seagate drives ZFS array in it as well. It's mirrored, but I have some room to pull things over and wipe diisks on the freenas system via the NFS share or FTP. I'd actually like to try Butter on that drive set just to see how well it works... eventually.

Another Thought:
I could also set up a Win32 VM and do a trial of backblaze's service on FreeNAS to get things uploaded and secure for the switch. it would be nice for them just to roll a FreeBSD client out, this isn't technically a server as much as it is a UPNP device on my network in my case. Preaching to the choir, I know.

What the hell am I doing?
So, you guys are suggesting basically blowing away my antiquated raid topology and going RaidZ2 with mirroring?

Don't tell my wife:
Honestly, I have zero problems buying more drives because I know they're going to good use. I bought enough 8tb wd reds to replace all 15 of the seagate drives one at a time, so I technically have 30 available.

I still have 8 bays open in the 846 case, subtract 2 for reslivering/replacement spots just to be safe...

I could also always grab another 2u, 3u, or 4u case, add an expander and power board, and have a storage enclosure. I'd literally just need a SAS2 or SAS3 with 1 external port. I'm not saying money is no object, but this NAS has paid for itself many times over and I know it will again.

 

[southwow]

Just wanted to add, this started on spare hardware many, many years ago with a 3 drive set. It's pretty awesome how it has served my and my family's needs over the years.

 

[Chris Moore]

With 8's, I'm currently at around 45 TB usage

That is the amount of data that you would need to pull off of your pool to be able to destroy the pool to reconfigure the pool?

 

[Chris Moore]

So, you guys are suggesting basically blowing away my antiquated raid topology and going RaidZ2 with mirroring?

There is no mirroring in RAIDz2. I am getting some information from you so I can better understand before making a suggestion, but I am thinking that you would have better utilization of the capacity of your drives by using RAIDz2 instead of all those 3 drive RAIDz1 vdevs.

 

[southwow]

That is the amount of data that you would need to pull off of your pool to be able to destroy the pool to reconfigure the pool?

Yes, I'll need to pull off 40-50 TB. 90% of that is large files such as MKV, ISO, and even SHN, OGG, etc if you count smaller 'large' files.

 

[southwow]

Thanks for your help, everyone. Looking forward to hearing your suggestions!

 

[Stux]

Definately sounds like you should be investigating going to RaidZ2 and 25% parity with better redundancy.

 

[Stux]

Make a new pool with 8x8TB disks in RaidZ2.

I think that should be big enough to transfer all your content with a zpool send/receive.

Then you can add 8x4TB disks or whatever and another 8x4TB.

6x4x2 + 6x8 = 96TB.

And that’s with just 8 8TB.

 

[southwow]

Sounds like a plan! That's with 2 parity disks, right?

@Chris Moore, can you think of any downside to this?

I'm assuming that the performance will be similar to my current RaidZ1 setup?

Set up a VM last night, so I'll probably have a backblaze subscription in place after a month of backup on my slow comcast connection. Will report back! May be ambitious, but I'll try to get it started copying over the weekend.

 

[Stux]

Your current pool has a fairly high amount of IOPS. Because each vdev means you have more IOPS, and your vdevs are made of 3 disks, so you have a lot.

So, for redundancy rather than say 2 vdevs of 3 disks each in raidz1, you will have just as much space from a 6 disk RaidZ2 vdev. But because it takes two disks in the one vdev to fail before you even start to have problems it’s actuslly exponentially more reliable.

Then, might as well go to 8-way vdevs and get more storage space. 25% parity instead of 33%.

The con is that you will have less IOPS. If you think IOPS are more important than storage efficiency, then I would suggest 6-way raidz2

 

[diskdiddler]

Unaffordable, not unreliable.

 

[diskdiddler]

We had this discussion before, SMR is the only way to achieve such an high areal density, and although the documentation for that model still doesn't mention SMR, Seagate has since launched the Archive v3 drives, which do mention SMR, and if you look at the main specs they are all identical, including the same 1203 GB/sq.in areal density.

There are 8tb, non smr drives, I’m pretty sure of that?

 

[Inxsible]

There are 8tb, non smr drives, I’m pretty sure of that?

Is that a question or a statement?:p

 

[southwow]

Well, I finally lost one of the shucked Seagate 8's tonight. Pretty good run for a $169.00 8TB drive. hope the rest don't all die at the same time, lol

 

[diskdiddler]

Is that a question or a statement?:p

I was pretty sure, but couldn't think of any examples.

However, I'm fairly certain the WD red Nas disk is PMR isn't it?

 

[Johnnie Black]

However, I'm fairly certain the WD red Nas disk is PMR isn't it?

WD Red is PMR, Seagate ST8000DM004 is SMR.

 

[diskdiddler]

So that's PMR at 8tb then.

 

[Johnnie Black]

So that's PMR at 8tb then.

There are 12TB PMR drives