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deimos
Nov 30, 2006

Forget it man this bat is whack, it's got poobrain!


Thermopyle posted:

You sure about this? My Googlin' leads me to believe you need to flash it for IT mode...

Whoops, you're right.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams


For what it's worth, flashing is really easy.

Thermopyle
Jul 1, 2003

...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. —Bertrand Russell



FISHMANPET posted:

For what it's worth, flashing is really easy.

Yeah, I had to do it for my current M1015, and my previous LSI card whose model I can't remember. The hard part is dragging a monitor and keyboard out to the server to do it.

edit: I've been doing some more reading and from what I'm looking at you don't need to flash anything on 9240-8i cards like the M1015 if you're running Linux, as the 9240-8i doesn't need an IT mode because it just passes drives right through to the OS if you don't configure them as part of a RAID array.

The reason people flash them is to flash the 9211-8i firmware which has greater compatibility with non-Linux operating systems...and on the 9211-8i firmware you do need the IT mode.

Thermopyle fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Apr 14, 2014

Combat Pretzel
Jun 23, 2004

No, seriously... what kurds?!

I come to you with a warning: Don't trust that piece of shit called Bitlocker Drive Encryption.

My box did blue screen thanks to some unrelated experiments, and for some reason it took Bitlocker with it and sent it into some limbo state from which it didn't seem to have a proper failure mode for. Every so much disk IO, it just crashed the system with the oh so informative BITLOCKER_FATAL_ERROR. It took about three hours and around 20 BSODs to get my relevant data back (interestingly, it managed to track progress across BSODs), which made me almost become religious.

Given how stable NTFS is, as well as their newer toys like Storage Spaces and ReFS, I'm surprised Bitlocker is such a clusterfuck. Up until now, I'd have expected it to go in sort of a RAID-style failure mode, where all IO is blocked and the user informed about the issue. But no, lets bluescreen instead.

Well, at least it finally made me use that fancy drive bay in my case...

Star War Sex Parrot
Oct 2, 2003



Muldoon

That's a case for a discerning computer janitor.

Don Lapre
Mar 28, 2001

If you're having problems you're either holding the phone wrong or you have tiny girl hands.


Combat Pretzel posted:

I come to you with a warning: Don't trust that piece of shit called Bitlocker Drive Encryption.

My box did blue screen thanks to some unrelated experiments, and for some reason it took Bitlocker with it and sent it into some limbo state from which it didn't seem to have a proper failure mode for. Every so much disk IO, it just crashed the system with the oh so informative BITLOCKER_FATAL_ERROR. It took about three hours and around 20 BSODs to get my relevant data back (interestingly, it managed to track progress across BSODs), which made me almost become religious.

Given how stable NTFS is, as well as their newer toys like Storage Spaces and ReFS, I'm surprised Bitlocker is such a clusterfuck. Up until now, I'd have expected it to go in sort of a RAID-style failure mode, where all IO is blocked and the user informed about the issue. But no, lets bluescreen instead.

Well, at least it finally made me use that fancy drive bay in my case...



If you are ever using encryption you should have good backups.

Combat Pretzel
Jun 23, 2004

No, seriously... what kurds?!

At least I had recovery keys stored off-computer in multiple places. Yeah, I know about backups, I keep telling people about it whenever they complain about their hard disk going tits up. But you know how it is, the shoemaker's son always goes barefoot.

Still, the complaint is that Bitlocker gets knocked over so easily. Which makes even less sense, given that all data decrypted perfectly (the volume was thin provisioned, so there weren't any broken blocks in free space). So I don't get why it suddenly felt a reason to BSOD over and over.

sleepy gary
Jan 11, 2006



Don Lapre posted:

If you are ever using a computer you should have good backups.

fixed.

Combat Pretzel get it together, man.

NUMBER 1 FULCI FAN
Jun 1, 2003

If we vanished tomorrow, no organism on this planet would miss us.
Nothing in nature needs us.





Buglord

Is there a better cost-to-quality ratio than setting up an HP N54L with XPEnology? I'm on a budget, so I'm thinking I'm going to wait until I can find an N54L on sale (I hear they're often on sale for ~$229 at Newegg).

D. Ebdrup
Mar 13, 2009



Thermopyle posted:

LSI 9220-8i vs 9240-8i
The 9240-8i is just the 9220-8i with RAID 5 and 50 which the M1000 Advanced Feature key gives the 9220-8i (I believe the 9240-8i comes with the M1000 key soldered on) - you still need to flash to to the IT firmware to get SATA Passthrough, which enables NCQ along with OS-level control over the write cache and other things.

AlternateAccount
Apr 25, 2005
FYGM

QPZIL posted:

Is there a better cost-to-quality ratio than setting up an HP N54L with XPEnology? I'm on a budget, so I'm thinking I'm going to wait until I can find an N54L on sale (I hear they're often on sale for ~$229 at Newegg).

As someone who runs this exact setup, it works so well I can't imagine beating it(are we still doing phrasing?) The shitty little Turion in there will even re-encode most videos on the system down to iPhone size and stream them properly. It's really groovy once you get it running.

phosdex
Dec 16, 2005



Tortured By Flan

Newegg has the 3TB Seagate NAS drives for $115 today.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...-_-22178392-L0B

eddiewalker
Apr 28, 2004


QPZIL posted:

Is there a better cost-to-quality ratio than setting up an HP N54L with XPEnology? I'm on a budget, so I'm thinking I'm going to wait until I can find an N54L on sale (I hear they're often on sale for ~$229 at Newegg).

I like mine a lot. Set an alert on Slickdeals if you want to get it for under $250 after rebate. Seems to pop up about once a month, but Newegg's rebate pricing makes using price trackers difficult. (And they killed off Camelegg's data access.)

In case anyone else didn't notice, there's a full USB port inside the case that makes an awesome place for an Xpenology boot stick.

eddiewalker fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Apr 15, 2014

dorkanoid
Dec 21, 2004



eddiewalker posted:

I like mine a lot. Set an alert on Slickdeals if you want to get it for under $250 after rebate. Seems to pop up about once a month, but Newegg's rebate pricing makes using price trackers difficult. (And they killed off Camelegg's data access.)

In case anyone else didn't notice, there's a full USB port inside the case that makes an awesome place for an Xpenology boot stick.

I hadn't even heard of it, but based on this I checked local prices (which are typically 30% above US prices) - <$250 delivered as it was 40% off I was looking for a new NAS a month ago, and this makes it a no-brainer!

Thermopyle
Jul 1, 2003

...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. —Bertrand Russell



D. Ebdrup posted:

The 9240-8i is just the 9220-8i with RAID 5 and 50 which the M1000 Advanced Feature key gives the 9220-8i (I believe the 9240-8i comes with the M1000 key soldered on) - you still need to flash to to the IT firmware to get SATA Passthrough, which enables NCQ along with OS-level control over the write cache and other things.

Are you sure about this? I've read multiple posts on the internets that say you do not need to do this as the 9240/9220 automatically do passthrough for drives not in a card-managed array, and the only reason to flash the IT firmware is to make it run with the more stable 9211 drivers on non-Linux operating systems. For example:

quote:

There is no "IT Mode" for the native M1015 or 9240 drivers. It simply is not needed. The reason people wanted the IT load when running as a 9211 is because the 9211 doesn't really do single disk passthrough correctly - it builds the disk as a single-drive raid 0, which puts nasty little headers on the disk and mucks up your ability to share disks directly with other systems. The 9240 firmware does not doe this - any drive not part of a raid is just passed through directly as a single drive - and no special 'IT mode' driver is necessary.

I mean, I don't want to just say you're wrong, but I haven't found anyone citing any official LSI documentation on this one way or the other. Everybody just citing each other without any other evidence one way or the other.

NUMBER 1 FULCI FAN
Jun 1, 2003

If we vanished tomorrow, no organism on this planet would miss us.
Nothing in nature needs us.





Buglord

Welp, found a good deal on an N54L so it's being delivered tomorrow.

My first thought was to install ESXi on it so that I could run XPEnology on one VM for my storage needs, and then have another VM for a download server. But... would it make more sense to just install Ubuntu Server or something and use ZFS and share via CIFS or something, instead of having a dedicated NAS OS?

eddiewalker
Apr 28, 2004


QPZIL posted:

Welp, found a good deal on an N54L so it's being delivered tomorrow.

My first thought was to install ESXi on it so that I could run XPEnology on one VM for my storage needs, and then have another VM for a download server. But... would it make more sense to just install Ubuntu Server or something and use ZFS and share via CIFS or something, instead of having a dedicated NAS OS?

What do you mean by download server? There are synology packages that can automate most kinds of downloads.

thebigcow
Jan 3, 2001

Bully!

QPZIL posted:

Welp, found a good deal on an N54L so it's being delivered tomorrow.

My first thought was to install ESXi on it so that I could run XPEnology on one VM for my storage needs, and then have another VM for a download server. But... would it make more sense to just install Ubuntu Server or something and use ZFS and share via CIFS or something, instead of having a dedicated NAS OS?

What does your "download server" do that xpenology can't do on its own?

NUMBER 1 FULCI FAN
Jun 1, 2003

If we vanished tomorrow, no organism on this planet would miss us.
Nothing in nature needs us.





Buglord

eddiewalker posted:

What do you mean by download server? There are synology packages that can automate most kinds of downloads.

Sickbeard, Couchpotato, Headphones, SABNZBD, and Transmission. If Synology can do all of that, then great!

AlternateAccount
Apr 25, 2005
FYGM

Also you're going to need more than 2GB of RAM if you're planning that.

edit: also, it wasn't entirely clear to me because I was mostly asleep while setting it up, but xpenology runs from a USB stick that you leave in the machine, but it puts some system partitions on the spindle drives. If the USB dies, you can just make another and boot again, apparently. I kept thinking it was doing an install TO the hard drives and was then no longer required. I am also dumb sometimes.

NUMBER 1 FULCI FAN
Jun 1, 2003

If we vanished tomorrow, no organism on this planet would miss us.
Nothing in nature needs us.





Buglord

AlternateAccount posted:

Also you're going to need more than 2GB of RAM if you're planning that.

Well, yeah, that's the plan.

Flipperwaldt
Nov 11, 2011

Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?



QPZIL posted:

Sickbeard, Couchpotato, Headphones, SABNZBD, and Transmission. If Synology can do all of that, then great!
http://www.synocommunity.com/packages

e: That means yes to all.

Flipperwaldt fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Apr 15, 2014

dorkanoid
Dec 21, 2004



QPZIL posted:

Sickbeard, Couchpotato, Headphones, SABNZBD, and Transmission. If Synology can do all of that, then great!

AlternateAccount posted:

Also you're going to need more than 2GB of RAM if you're planning that.

I've at one point run all of those on my Synology 211j which has a horrible 1.2GHz ARM CPU, and a whopping 128MB(!) RAM.

It was slow, but it worked - so I don't think this "real" computer will have trouble at all

eddiewalker
Apr 28, 2004


AlternateAccount posted:

Also you're going to need more than 2GB of RAM if you're planning that.

All that plus Plex with lots of transcoding, 2gb of ram seems to be running fine. I've never seen more that 60% utilization.

Try it before you buy more.

dorkanoid
Dec 21, 2004



eddiewalker posted:

All that plus Plex with lots of transcoding, 2gb of ram seems to be running fine. I've never seen more that 60% utilization.

Try it before you buy more.

Any DDR3 RAM works for this, right - it's not SO-DIMM? I have a stick of 4GB RAM, can I just stick that in there, or do I have to replace the one that's already there?

(That was a general question, not to you specifically - since you're indicating that you're running the default 2GB )

eddiewalker
Apr 28, 2004


dorkanoid posted:

Any DDR3 RAM works for this, right - it's not SO-DIMM? I have a stick of 4GB RAM, can I just stick that in there, or do I have to replace the one that's already there?

(That was a general question, not to you specifically - since you're indicating that you're running the default 2GB )

General info including ram: http://homeservershow.com/forums/in...hardware-links/

It ships with ECC if that matters to you.

eightysixed
Sep 23, 2004

I always tell the truth. Even when I lie.



Wow. How can I get this on my Xpenology rig?

Don Lapre
Mar 28, 2001

If you're having problems you're either holding the phone wrong or you have tiny girl hands.


eightysixed posted:

Wow. How can I get this on my Xpenology rig?

http://www.synocommunity.com/faq

eightysixed
Sep 23, 2004

I always tell the truth. Even when I lie.



Oh. I didn't think I would be able to use the official packages.synocommunity.com pkg, I thout it would be something directly related/supplied by the Xpenology community. Well that's easy enough. Awesome

Don Lapre
Mar 28, 2001

If you're having problems you're either holding the phone wrong or you have tiny girl hands.


eightysixed posted:

Oh. I didn't think I would be able to use the official packages.synocommunity.com pkg, I thout it would be something directly related/supplied by the Xpenology community. Well that's easy enough. Awesome

Xpenology units are effectively Synology units when it comes to software.

eightysixed
Sep 23, 2004

I always tell the truth. Even when I lie.


Don Lapre posted:

Xpenology units are effectively Synology units when it comes to software.

That's interesting. I'm suprised Synology isnt cracking down on them or something.

FunOne
Aug 20, 2000
I am a slimey vat of concentrated stupidity



Fun Shoe

Any recommendations on backup?

I've been with Crashplan for a few years, but that was when I was on super-fast internet in a big city and could spend the time and bandwidth to do all my backups over the interwebs.

I've since moved to a place where only DSL is available. With bandwidth caps.

So I've broken down and purchased a portable 4TB drive to do offsite backups on to, but still have ~20gig or so that I'd like to have online backups cover. Is Crashplan still the recommended software and service or is there another option?

Also, before we go down this road: Backup means versions and revisions. Dropbox and Google drive are not backup.

eightysixed
Sep 23, 2004

I always tell the truth. Even when I lie.


FunOne posted:

Also, before we go down this road: Backup means versions and revisions. Dropbox and Google drive are not backup.

And an external harddrive sitting on your desk is also not an "offsite" backup solution before we go back down that road, too

LRADIKAL
Jun 10, 2001

A Very Useful Person



Fun Shoe

Crashplan will literally send you a hard drive to back up your stuff to.

ConfusedUs
Feb 24, 2004

Bees?
You want fucking bees?
Here you go!
ROLL INITIATIVE!!


FunOne posted:

Any recommendations on backup?

I've been with Crashplan for a few years, but that was when I was on super-fast internet in a big city and could spend the time and bandwidth to do all my backups over the interwebs.

I've since moved to a place where only DSL is available. With bandwidth caps.

So I've broken down and purchased a portable 4TB drive to do offsite backups on to, but still have ~20gig or so that I'd like to have online backups cover. Is Crashplan still the recommended software and service or is there another option?

Also, before we go down this road: Backup means versions and revisions. Dropbox and Google drive are not backup.

Pretty sure you can send Crashplan a harddrive for initial seeding, and do you really have enough data change to make uploading impractical?

If you do, I guess get a couple of HDDs and a safe deposit box at the bank. Swap them out regularly so that you have one at home and one at the bank. You won't always be 100% up to date but you'll be a lot closer than if your only backup is on your desk when your PC catches fire.

bizwank
Oct 4, 2002



ConfusedUs posted:

Pretty sure you can send Crashplan a harddrive for initial seeding...
You have to use one of their 1TB harddrives and pay $125 for the privilege. If you want to keep the drive it's another $150.

D. Ebdrup
Mar 13, 2009



Thermopyle posted:

Are you sure about this? I've read multiple posts on the internets that say you do not need to do this as the 9240/9220 automatically do passthrough for drives not in a card-managed array, and the only reason to flash the IT firmware is to make it run with the more stable 9211 drivers on non-Linux operating systems. For example:


I mean, I don't want to just say you're wrong, but I haven't found anyone citing any official LSI documentation on this one way or the other. Everybody just citing each other without any other evidence one way or the other.
Well, I'm sure that ZFS expects whole access to the drive (which also means no sliced partitions) and that it will benefit from NCQ and OS-level control over the write cache (which it doesn't have without SATA passthrough, although I can't find the actual documentation saying this beyond this). Think of it this way: SATA Passthrough makes the HBA function as if the drives are directly on the computers motherboard . Also, flashing it means you can use the card without a driver (for FreeBSD/FreeNAS you'll need this, since FreeBSD doesn't have a driver for it, like the guy you quoted mentioned in his post).
However, it's all theoretical and can be solved right soon: if you buy a M1015 or 9240-i8, you can check yourself by first creating a pool in ZFS without flashing the firmware and doing bonnie++ benchmarks, then destroying that pool, flashing the card, and recreating the pool, then doing bonnie++ benchmarks. Either way, you get a working pool with a HBA and we find the answer with some numbers to prove it, rather than just theories from forum posters.

D. Ebdrup fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Apr 16, 2014

FunOne
Aug 20, 2000
I am a slimey vat of concentrated stupidity



Fun Shoe

eightysixed posted:

And an external harddrive sitting on your desk is also not an "offsite" backup solution before we go back down that road, too

It is if I take it and lock it at my office.

Rate of change is enough to make uploading over DSL impractical. Hell, just one trip out with the camera is enough to tie up my line for days. That same amount can be backed up to the portable over lunch and safely back off site within an hour. Almost anything that impacts me and the drive would be catastrophic enough to not worry about backups. For those edge cases I'll be getting another in a month or so in order to do swaps.

I was asking about software for both local and cloud backups.

dox
Mar 4, 2006


I'm not sure what the problem here is? You can use CrashPlan to backup to an external drive or any other computer on your local network (as well as their servers) so you don't need to purchase any other software to accomplish what you are trying to do.

FunOne
Aug 20, 2000
I am a slimey vat of concentrated stupidity



Fun Shoe

dox posted:

I'm not sure what the problem here is? You can use CrashPlan to backup to an external drive or any other computer on your local network (as well as their servers) so you don't need to purchase any other software to accomplish what you are trying to do.

I asked if it was still the best solution for my use case. It has limited file version and pruning support, doesn't really support multiple backup volumes, doesn't verify backups as far as I can tell, etc. So, is Crashplan still the best solution or is there something else that would better fit?

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