Can you get S.M.A.R.T info ?

[Stux]

I think I got it almost. So it should matter if I set threshold for 2 days or 20 days in my case , right ? It's still less than 28.

I just don't what this threshold to start scrubbing on it's own when it's value was exceeded. Like the setting in freenas where you set a threshold for boot drive scrub, and if it's set to 35days , it will start automatically as soon as you exceed the 35 days. You know what I mean ?

Right. It will only scrub on your schedule AFTER the threshold is exceeded.

 

[joeschmuck]

Right. It will only scrub on your schedule AFTER the threshold is exceeded.

Ditto!

Do you know what Ditto means, where it came from? Probably don't care either. I'm old.

 

[Black Ninja]

Right. It will only scrub on your schedule AFTER the threshold is exceeded.

But it will not start a scrub on it's own, unless is set in the calendar , right ?

 

[joeschmuck]

But it will not start a scrub on it's own, unless is set in the calendar , right ?

Correct.

So I just ran my benchmarks again without the PERC card and it's night a day difference. First of all the system boots up without issue, and it boots up fast. The old Crucial M4 drives are not super high speed compared to today's drives but they do a fair job. I think that the write tests would have been faster if I had done a little garbage collection before I ran the test.

 

[Black Ninja]

As much as I love freenas, some of their ideas of intuitiveness don't really match my understanding about common sense.

I remember early stages of learning freenas it was written in the manual that "windows username has to match freenas". Which is totally not required and not even possible if you windows login is two words like Boby Joe. It's seems this was just somebody's idea of convenience so you don't have to type pass, but there was not explanation why So you don't know if it's requirement to work at all , or just a suggestion for particular reason.

P.S. Something I rather know the whole thing so I can decide what's "convenient" to me , then half story.

 

[Black Ninja]

Correct.

Thanks. It's just confuses me with the boot scrub threshold setting cause that will start automatically when exceeded. But I am glad in this case it will not.

So I just ran my benchmarks again without the PERC card and it's night a day difference. First of all the system boots up without issue, and it boots up fast. The old Crucial M4 drives are not super high speed compared to today's drives but they do a fair job.

Of course is better your card was doing you no good. You saw mine with a good card , aren't they much better ? But now you have no redundancy at all. And this means not just one machine , this means (since it's hypervisor) you will pull the rug under multiple machine when SSD pops. It's really up to you and your needs of reliability.

If this was me: I gave up 10GB nic, just to have a raid card and redundancy. Cause I only have 1 expansion slot. Do you know how much it hurts ?

 

[joeschmuck]

Cause I only have 1 expansion slot. Do you know how much it hurts ? :)

I feel your pain.

I'm making nightly backups using xsi backup and it works really well. Rebuilding ESXi is actually very easy and after doing it a few times, it helps reinforce the learning. Of course I'd like the RAID card but not just yet. Also, the M4 SSD is running at full speed and just exceeds the average benchmarks for this drive so I'm a happy camper for now. I was also just looking at a Samsung 850 Pro 1TB, looks very nice. the non-pro costs a bit less and still looks very good. My main computer only have SATA II so the bandwidth is not the key factor for me. Of course one day I may replace the motherboard and get some real speed. 1TB SSD, didn't think I'd see it this soon.

 

[Black Ninja]

Correct.

So I just ran my benchmarks again without the PERC card and it's night a day difference. First of all the system boots up without issue, and it boots up fast. The old Crucial M4 drives are not super high speed compared to today's drives but they do a fair job. I think that the write tests would have been faster if I had done a little garbage collection before I ran the test.

Oh and I wound suggest using AS SSD along with crystalmark. AS SSD will give you IOPS and MB in the same test. I found these 2 to be the most usefull.

ATTO I don't use much cause compressible benchmark - you ssd will show write 500 MB's but actually when you copy a movie will write with 100MB/s. So uncompresible data benchmark will really show what the drive actually capable of.

 

[Black Ninja]

I feel your pain.

I'm making nightly backups using xsi backup and it works really well. Rebuilding ESXi is actually very easy and after doing it a few times, it helps reinforce the learning. Of course I'd like the RAID card but not just yet. Also, the M4 SSD is running at full speed and just exceeds the average benchmarks for this drive so I'm a happy camper for now. I was also just looking at a Samsung 850 Pro 1TB, looks very nice. the non-pro costs a bit less and still looks very good. My main computer only have SATA II so the bandwidth is not the key factor for me. Of course one day I may replace the motherboard and get some real speed. 1TB SSD, didn't think I'd see it this soon.

I would backup the data inside the VM, I don't really think backup with 3th party tool of ESXI is a good idea. I know some people will support me on this one , but that's a long story.

Samsung PRO 1TB is a good idea. I have few 512GB and few 256GB. What I don't like about EVO is slower controller and way more unreliable flash: PRO is using 40nm while EVO is 19 or 20nm, that's half the size, that's so bad about flash endurance I wouldn't buy if it's half the price , which is not even that cheaper.

SATA2 subject: Keep in mind that SATA3 will help when you exceed 270 MB read or write speed , which will happened on large sequential reads. Samsung PRO on SATA2 might feel faster than you current SSD on SATA3. Let me find a crystal mark on my Samsung PRO connected to SATA2 so you can see that exceeds speed and iops on everything but peak sequential speed.


P.S I couldn't find a Samsung pro on sata2 bench. But I'll show you SATA2 on Intel S3500, which is much slower and smaller -120GB drive , but still faster than what you have except the peak sequential read. This being SATA2 will run OS snappier than slower SSD on sata3 I believe.

 

[joeschmuck]

Here is my Samsung 850 EVO on my SATA II connection. I'd buy the Pro version because of the 10 year warranty because I feel like a 1TB drive would easily last that long as a main drive for a personal computer.

 

[Black Ninja]

Here is my Samsung 850 EVO on my SATA II connection. I'd buy the Pro version because of the 10 year warranty because I feel like a 1TB drive would easily last that long as a main drive for a personal computer.

There you go. See your 4Kq32 are almost 3 time faster that your crucial on sata3. I have one EVO 256GB in my old laptop sata2.

 

[joeschmuck]

The crucial M4 is pretty old of course so things do change pretty quickly in the electronics world. I was eyeballing a 1TB drive this morning but at over $600, it was too much for me right now.

 

[Black Ninja]

The crucial M4 is pretty old of course so things do change pretty quickly in the electronics world. I was eyeballing a 1TB drive this morning but at over $600, it was too much for me right now.

1TB what kind of disk ?

 

[joeschmuck]

1TB what kind of disk ?

Samsung 850 Pro. Oops, the current price is $418.99 delivered. Now I'm thinking hard about it. But I still have 110GB free on my current 500GB SSD. November there will be more sales and I'll figure out what I'm going to do with if I'll actually be running two machines or if I'll be back to running a single machine.

I just installed one of my Crucial M4 SSD's into my daughters Yoga 2 laptop. It was build with a thick plastic spacer in it and removing it allowed the case to be small enough to fit. Unfortunately the case screws were now too long to keep the case closed so I just used the insulated aluminum shield which was attached the the original laptop hard drive and all was good. Now she has a much faster acting laptop.

 

[Black Ninja]

Samsung 850 Pro. Oops, the current price is $418.99 delivered. Now I'm thinking hard about it. But I still have 110GB free on my current 500GB SSD. November there will be more sales and I'll figure out what I'm going to do with if I'll actually be running two machines or if I'll be back to running a single machine.

I just installed one of my Crucial M4 SSD's into my daughters Yoga 2 laptop. It was build with a thick plastic spacer in it and removing it allowed the case to be small enough to fit. Unfortunately the case screws were now too long to keep the case closed so I just used the insulated aluminum shield which was attached the the original laptop hard drive and all was good. Now she has a much faster acting laptop.

Yeah that's nice drive, but if you get only one , it will no redundancy. I always think of drives as 2x whatever it cost times 2. Is good to get little bigger than you actual need. If you have 500GB SSD and you have 100GB free left on it , wouldn't put anything more on it. There is nothing worst than filling your SSD up. And since in ESXI there is no trim overprovisioning is a good idea. I happened to kill my Samsung 850 510 GB performance early days in ESXI from almost 500MB/s write to 80MB/s. And if you just delete the data it wont bring it back to speed , unless secure erase is performed.

 

[joeschmuck]

I happened to kill my Samsung 850 510 GB performance early days in ESXI from almost 500MB/s write to 80MB/s. And if you just delete the data it wont bring it back to speed , unless secure erase is performed.

Hum... I thought that all SSDs these days have automatic Garbage Collection for systems which don't have TRIM, but maybe not. I know automatic GC may not be as efficient as TRIM but it's better than none at all. I know my M4 does have automatic GC but I've never looked into the Samsung 850. I did just read a few things on the internet and it said to leave about 20% of a SSD unpartitioned in order to maintain the speed of the SSD. I suspect this is to assist in the GC. And honestly, I'm a bit surprised that ESXi doesn't have TRIM, but someday I'm sure that they will. UNMAP just doesn't seem to be the same thing as TRIM.

 

[Black Ninja]

Hum... I thought that all SSDs these days have automatic Garbage Collection for systems which don't have TRIM, but maybe not. I know automatic GC may not be as efficient as TRIM but it's better than none at all. I know my M4 does have automatic GC but I've never looked into the Samsung 850

They should all have GC, but that will not save you from the the flash WRITES in comparison to HDD. I am sure Samsung 850 Pro will have all the features of crucial. i do consider Crucial to be on the bottom of SSD market.

I did just read a few things on the internet and it said to leave about 20% of a SSD unpartitioned in order to maintain the speed of the SSD. I suspect this is to assist in the GC. And honestly, I'm a bit surprised that ESXi doesn't have TRIM, but someday I'm sure that they will. UNMAP just doesn't seem to be the same thing as TRIM.

Enterprise SSD drives has much more over-provisioning from the manufacturer compared to the consumer ones. I don't like consumer ones anymore since I learn the differences. Especialy in RAID controller. I did start with Samsung 850 PRO's 512GB as data stores directly connected to the MB, but for raid card I picked 2x Intel DC s3700 800GB, what a difference.
I was surprised about ESXI and TRIM too, but since we have so many abstractions between the actual storage and what the OS in VM sees, it just I guess ... is too many hoops that the trim needs to go through. I am not 100% sure if there is a way or not, but I think I found my way around the problem: Get a bigger enterprise SSD, Don't fill them up (as @jgreco said) and some over-provisioning will not hurt too. I often check the performance of my SSD datastore for performance and so far is on 100%

 

[joeschmuck]

Just bought the wife a new laptop, my money is gone for the toys for now. I try to buy for Christmas early on the expensive stuff. If I see a good deal on a SSD though, I'll leap but it won't be for ESXi, it will be for my Windows computer. The 850 500GB EVO drive will end up in the ESXi machine.

 

[Stux]

There is nothing worst than filling your SSD up

True that.

I've seen performance plummet on Samsung Pro drives (830/840/850) when you fill them to 5-10% free.

FWIW, I love the performance of the PCIe NVMe Samsung pro drives (950/960).

 

[joeschmuck]

FWIW, I love the performance of the PCIe NVMe Samsung pro drives (950/960).

Can you send me one so I can too be amazed! :D