Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions
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@geertcourmacher said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
@Dashrender
You're quite correct. I wasn't actually sure whether either of those sites were made for what I wanted; let alone that anyone would care about a simple home file server. In academia, as almost anywhere else in life, I'd say its important to listen to those who really understand what they are doing. There is so much info/tutorials out there where people just pass over their "knowledge" of what they have read somewhere, without understanding anything behind the scene/GUI. Kind of like, if I now started to give advice to others on why Raid 6 is such a good idea, how to go about it, etc.. - even though it may work for my purpose, I feel very few users outside these very particular forums have a true understanding of eventual risks, downsides and so on. For instance, aside from a very general article on, I think Cnet, that Raid5 is becoming useless, those forums are still full of people "bragging" about their raid5 setup (quite similiar in size to what I have in mind, not something really small either). Just reading over at spiceworks and some of SAM's articles/comments, I knew that wasn't an option, yet I still had no idea (and had not read anything about it) that a very simple thing such as a BIOS update would screw over fake Raid10 (which, I assumed, was very safe). I didn't even have a reason to do that bios update, I just saw a new one coming out.Most solutions offered here, honestly, are overkill for what I want and need. But better be overwhelmed and aware of risks, then having a false sense of security.
I know you are all correct and I hate ignorance, but to be perfectly honest - and I hope you don't count that as dismissal of any advice (which it isn't), there is still a great sense of unease for me when thinking about these setups and I would much rather just go about and slap that ol' windows onto the array or even just run it from a seperate disk. I would feel much better if this was a general foray into a new OS without my storage depending on it. Because as secure as these OS' are, the risk of user error is certainly larger on my side. I know this mindset is in conflict with that of true IT guys - that lack of curiousty and exploration surely won't be understood (and, I would have the same idea in my discipline) - but at heart I'm still very content to be just a slightly advanced consumer, not an admin, if that makes any sense.
Again, I hope this doesn't create the feeling of rejecting any advice; I won't. It's just what I could do in the next half hour and know it would work, and something obviously better, yet with a lot of unknowns in it.There are conversations to be had. I think forums like this are here specifically to argue points and get to the heart of what is best practice for a given situation. Bouncing ideas off of each other is great. Misinformation is the death of progress though and you will find a lot of it. Sometimes it's intentional other times it isn't. I myself sometimes think I understand a topic and find out later I wasn't considering as much as I should have been.
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@wirestyle22 said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
@geertcourmacher said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
@Dashrender
You're quite correct. I wasn't actually sure whether either of those sites were made for what I wanted; let alone that anyone would care about a simple home file server. In academia, as almost anywhere else in life, I'd say its important to listen to those who really understand what they are doing. There is so much info/tutorials out there where people just pass over their "knowledge" of what they have read somewhere, without understanding anything behind the scene/GUI. Kind of like, if I now started to give advice to others on why Raid 6 is such a good idea, how to go about it, etc.. - even though it may work for my purpose, I feel very few users outside these very particular forums have a true understanding of eventual risks, downsides and so on. For instance, aside from a very general article on, I think Cnet, that Raid5 is becoming useless, those forums are still full of people "bragging" about their raid5 setup (quite similiar in size to what I have in mind, not something really small either). Just reading over at spiceworks and some of SAM's articles/comments, I knew that wasn't an option, yet I still had no idea (and had not read anything about it) that a very simple thing such as a BIOS update would screw over fake Raid10 (which, I assumed, was very safe). I didn't even have a reason to do that bios update, I just saw a new one coming out.Most solutions offered here, honestly, are overkill for what I want and need. But better be overwhelmed and aware of risks, then having a false sense of security.
I know you are all correct and I hate ignorance, but to be perfectly honest - and I hope you don't count that as dismissal of any advice (which it isn't), there is still a great sense of unease for me when thinking about these setups and I would much rather just go about and slap that ol' windows onto the array or even just run it from a seperate disk. I would feel much better if this was a general foray into a new OS without my storage depending on it. Because as secure as these OS' are, the risk of user error is certainly larger on my side. I know this mindset is in conflict with that of true IT guys - that lack of curiousty and exploration surely won't be understood (and, I would have the same idea in my discipline) - but at heart I'm still very content to be just a slightly advanced consumer, not an admin, if that makes any sense.
Again, I hope this doesn't create the feeling of rejecting any advice; I won't. It's just what I could do in the next half hour and know it would work, and something obviously better, yet with a lot of unknowns in it.There are conversations to be had. I think forums like this are here specifically to argue points and get to the heart of what is best practice for a given situation. Bouncing ideas off of each other is great. Misinformation is the death of progress though and you will find a lot of it. Sometimes it's intentional other times it isn't. I myself sometimes think I understand a topic and find out later I wasn't considering as much as I should have been.
Agreed! I find myself in the same boat. That is why communities like ML are great because we can interact with one another and bounce ideas around and deepen our knowledge in whatever the particular area we have questions about.
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I'll at least start an installation with one of your recommendations, either on the server now are as a second boot option on my work pc. CentOS would also be good as a server system, or was this a general recommendation to be paired with XenServer?
I'd like to start small with only what's necessary, if that makes sense. If i find it easier than anticipated, I can still go further. -
@geertcourmacher said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
I'll at least start an installation with one of your recommendations, either on the server now are as a second boot option on my work pc. CentOS would also be good as a server system, or was this a general recommendation to be paired with XenServer?
I'd like to start small with only what's necessary, if that makes sense. If i find it easier than anticipated, I can still go further.CentOS is great because its one version behind Red Hat which is enterprise level. I absolutely agree with everyone that if you are starting out there is a lot of benefits to using it and it's just as easy/complex as any other distro.
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@wirestyle22 said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
@geertcourmacher said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
I'll at least start an installation with one of your recommendations, either on the server now are as a second boot option on my work pc. CentOS would also be good as a server system, or was this a general recommendation to be paired with XenServer?
I'd like to start small with only what's necessary, if that makes sense. If i find it easier than anticipated, I can still go further.CentOS is great because its one version behind Red Hat which is enterprise level. I absolutely agree with everyone that if you are starting out there is a lot of benefits to using it and it's just as easy/complex as any other distro.
CentOS is Redhat Enterprise Linux. They are at exactly the same version CentOS 7 is RHEL 7. They are exactly the same thing, except CentOS doesn't have the Redhat branding.
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@geertcourmacher said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
@Dashrender
For instance, aside from a very general article on, I think Cnet, that Raid5 is becoming useless, those forums are still full of people "bragging" about their raid5 setupZDNet has the famous one by Robin Harris.
If you think those forums are bad, those are random people, mostly hobbyests. Go on SW and you are supposed to be in a pool of exclusively IT Pros and you get rabid RAID 5 fans there in huge quantities even with like half a decade of daily information that they don't dispute in the least.
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@wirestyle22 said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
@geertcourmacher said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
I'll at least start an installation with one of your recommendations, either on the server now are as a second boot option on my work pc. CentOS would also be good as a server system, or was this a general recommendation to be paired with XenServer?
I'd like to start small with only what's necessary, if that makes sense. If i find it easier than anticipated, I can still go further.CentOS is great because its one version behind Red Hat which is enterprise level. I absolutely agree with everyone that if you are starting out there is a lot of benefits to using it and it's just as easy/complex as any other distro.
Not behind at all, same product. They get the CentOS branding version out about 48 hours behind.
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May be thinking of Fedora? Which is what CentOS/RHEL are derived from.
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@geertcourmacher said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
I'll at least start an installation with one of your recommendations, either on the server now are as a second boot option on my work pc. CentOS would also be good as a server system, or was this a general recommendation to be paired with XenServer?
I'd like to start small with only what's necessary, if that makes sense. If i find it easier than anticipated, I can still go further.Skipping XenServer will often make for "more work". I realize that this is for home and not business so the strong guidance of "always virtualize" still has to be tempered with "do what you are happy with doing." But some of the reasons that we say that everything should be virtual is that it makes things easier, not harder. Technically it is "doing more", but only technically.
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@coliver said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
May be thinking of Fedora? Which is what CentOS/RHEL are derived from.
Fedora is a few versions ahead, not behind. It's RHEL that is behind in that case.
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@scottalanmiller said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
@coliver said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
May be thinking of Fedora? Which is what CentOS/RHEL are derived from.
Fedora is a few versions ahead, not behind. It's RHEL that is behind in that case.
Right, that's what I assumed @wirestyle22 was referencing.
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@scottalanmiller said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
@geertcourmacher said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
I'll at least start an installation with one of your recommendations, either on the server now are as a second boot option on my work pc. CentOS would also be good as a server system, or was this a general recommendation to be paired with XenServer?
I'd like to start small with only what's necessary, if that makes sense. If i find it easier than anticipated, I can still go further.Skipping XenServer will often make for "more work". I realize that this is for home and not business so the strong guidance of "always virtualize" still has to be tempered with "do what you are happy with doing." But some of the reasons that we say that everything should be virtual is that it makes things easier, not harder. Technically it is "doing more", but only technically.
Exactly. For example, when you reboot an OS that's installed on physical hardware, you have to reboot the hardware as well as the software. My IBM server takes over 7 mins to initialize the hardware. But, if I'm virtualized that time is zero or near zero. When I reboot a VM, I see a BIOS screen presented by the hypervisor and pop - my OS is booting. Also through the hypervisor I can mount ISOs for booting and troubleshooting. The hypervisor allows me to create virtual hardware to the VM so I don't have to worry about creating real DVDs or USB flash drives with installers on them. Another awesome advantage, backups. The VMs are just giant files to the hypervisor. If a VM is shutdown, you can just copy it anywhere you want, just like any other file.
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@geertcourmacher
As long as you're aware of the situation - which it sounds like you now are - then using Windows is fine because you have made an informed decision. -
I now have Win10 and CentOS on 2 usb sticks; I removed the 2.5" boot drive and only have the future Raid drives hocked to the controller.
I will now use the Adaptec Raid Bios utility to set up the Raid, following your instructions. Can this be independent from whatever OS I will eventually use or should I change settings accordingly?
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@geertcourmacher said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
I now have Win10 and CentOS on 2 usb sticks; I removed the 2.5" boot drive and only have the future Raid drives hocked to the controller.
I will now use the Adaptec Raid Bios utility to set up the Raid, following your instructions. Can this be independent from whatever OS I will eventually use or should I change settings accordingly?
It should be independent. If it relies on an OS it is something called fake RAID.
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Oh no, it's independent in that sense. I was referring to whether stripe size or any other setting within the Adaptec Raid Utility would respond better/worse to either OS.
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@geertcourmacher said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
Oh no, it's independent in that sense. I was referring to whether stripe size or any other setting within the Adaptec Raid Utility would respond better/worse to either OS.
No, that's a file and file system interaction, not one of the operating system.
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@geertcourmacher said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
I will now use the Adaptec Raid Bios utility to set up the Raid, following your instructions. Can this be independent from whatever OS I will eventually use or should I change settings accordingly?
Yes, hardware RAID happens in hardware completely. Once the hardware RAID encapsulation is complete, the OS simply sees the resulting drive. It's identical to having a single hard drive in a machine and dual booting.
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Thanks for all the help so far!
In the Raid controller Bios I realized two things:
- The Firmware is not the latest, but very close to it; 18937 (Feb 2012) vs the latest release 18948 (May 2012). Is an update recommended or just an unecessary risk? No Data or arrays are created yet.
- All of the WD drives are recognized as Speed 1.5G, vs the HGST one with 3.0G. Is that the Sata speed, 1 and 2? Because all drives should be 6Gb/s actually, and while the controller only goes as far as 3Gb/s it shouldn't be just 1.5GB/s. Weirdly at first 2 of the WD Red's were recognized correctly.
In case you wonder why I used CN1 and CN3, that's because the other 2 are currently blocked by the hd-sliders (I could remove those plastic bits though, if necessary).
The other thing I am uncertain is whether I should change anything in the general controller configuration; I'll attach a screen of the options.
When it comes to the Array configuration (I haven't yet started), the suggestion was to go with 4KB stripe size, correct? I can only start at 16, all the way up to 1024.
I am also uncertain as to the 2 remaining options here, Read Caching and Write Caching. The last (Create RAID via) has already been answered (A: Quick Init).
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@coliver said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
@scottalanmiller said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
@coliver said in Raid 6 Amateur File Server Setup Questions:
May be thinking of Fedora? Which is what CentOS/RHEL are derived from.
Fedora is a few versions ahead, not behind. It's RHEL that is behind in that case.
Right, that's what I assumed @wirestyle22 was referencing.
Sorry I've been super busy. I worded that incorrectly. Versioning being 48 hours behind. Yes it's the same product.
