[OpenIndiana-discuss] Hitachi 4 TB disks + HP Microserver + OI 151 + ZFS
andy thomas
andy at time-domain.co.uk
Sat May 12 06:07:46 UTC 2012
On Sun, 29 Apr 2012, Enrico wrote:
> thank you Andy for this info
> let us know your experience when you'll setup-up the disks
I didn't have any problems at all when I did this. I added the three 4 TB
disks to the system alongside the 250 GB disk it was supplied with and
booted OI 151a off a USB DVD drive after first editing the grub boot
stanza to replace the $ISADIR variable with 'amd64', as OI doesn't
auto-detect the fact that this microserver is fitted with a 64-bit CPU.
At the start of the live image installation, OI correctly detects all 4
disks but reports that only 2 TB of the 4 TB disks is usable if they are
used as boot disks. So I installed to the 250 GB disk and then created
the pool with:
zpool create lapback1 raidz c2t1d0 c2t2d0 c2t3d0
zfs create lapback1/backups
It checks out OK:
andy at lapback1:~# zfs list
NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT
lapback1 890K 7.13T 202K /lapback1
lapback1/backups 192K 7.13T 192K /lapback1/backups
rpool 4.90G 223G 46.5K /rpool
rpool/ROOT 2.93G 223G 31K legacy
rpool/ROOT/openindiana 2.93G 223G 2.91G /
rpool/dump 959M 223G 959M -
rpool/export 34.2M 223G 32K /export
rpool/export/home 34.2M 223G 32K /export/home
rpool/export/home/andy 34.2M 223G 34.2M /export/home/andy
rpool/swap 1020M 224G 137M -
and:
andy at lapback1:~# iostat -en
---- errors ---
s/w h/w trn tot device
0 0 0 0 c2t0d0
0 0 0 0 c2t1d0
0 0 0 0 c2t2d0
0 0 0 0 c2t3d0
I will be using these servers at a university for automated backups of
user laptops (Windows, Macs, Linux and the odd FreeBSD user) so that 5
minutes after a laptop connects to the network, it either backs up
incrementally or syncs the laptop with the server using rsync. (The
existing service runs on a Sun E450 running Open Solaris 134 SPARC and
fitted with 19 x 300 GB disks in three ZFS pools but we now need more
storage space and 300 GB is the limit for conventional SCSI disks).
I will post any problems I have with this in 'production' here.
Andy
> On 04/29/2012 09:24 AM, andy thomas wrote:
>> On Sat, 28 Apr 2012, Enrico wrote:
>>
>>> did a little research, just because i'm curious about this, my storage
>>> needs
>>> are much lower :)
>>>
>>> they say
>>> (http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showpost.php?p=13963218&postcount=4727)
>>> that SB820M south-bridge on n40l has a limit of 3.2tb for hdd capacity.
>>> but
>>> there are no such details on the official specs:
>>> support.amd.com/us/Embedded_TechDocs/47283.pdf
>>> i hope this helps a bit
>>
>> A comment from a poster called 'AFireInside' on this same forum says AMD
>> confirms that 4 TB disks will work in the N40L Microserver:
>>
>> http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?s=a97e85a928a1e6997245557220f4b729&t=1009531&page=2
>>
>>
>> Also, HP's own specifications confirm that this unit is suitable for 4 TB
>> disks:
>>
>> http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13716_div/13716_div.html
>>
>> A lot of the comments saying otherwise seem to relate to the earlier N36L
>> model,
>> earlier BIOS versions and booting Windows from disks larger than 3.2 TB.
>>
>> As for using Advanced Format disks with 4K sectors in ZFS pools, the worst
>> case
>> scenario would be that these disks can be used in a backwards-compatible
>> legacy
>> 512 byte sector format but with slower r/w performance. Also, Hitachi
>> provide a
>> Windows utility to re-align 4k sectors on their drives although I'm not
>> sure
>> whether this would suit OI/ZFS.
>>
>> Finally, it looks like OI has some support for 4k sector disks:
>>
>> http://wiki.openindiana.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=4883847
>>
>> and ZFS pools can be created with the 'zpool create block-size 4096 ...'
>> option.
>>
>> I'll take the plunge and order a N40L Microserver plus 3 x 4 TB disks and
>> I'll
>> post my experiences here.
>>
>> cheers, Andy
>>
>>> On 04/28/2012 08:39 PM, Enrico wrote:
>>>> Hi roy,
>>>> yes, right, it was just to tell Andy what I've tested with this hp system
>>>> and
>>>> OI. i think there are many people who have written in detail their
>>>> experience
>>>> about supported hdd sizes in forums easily reachable just by googling
>>>> n40l. let
>>>> me also correct what i've written before: the adaptec 1045/1405 are
>>>> luckily
>>>> supported by the aac driver, despite what is written on the man page. the
>>>> si3124
>>>> driver refers to a sata controller i've tested successfully on the pciex1
>>>> slot.
>>>> Best regards,
>>>> Enrico
>>>>
>>>> On 04/28/2012 06:13 PM, Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk wrote:
>>>>> It probably won't help much. Any SATA controller should recognize the
>>>>> 4TB
>>>>> drives, and the problem with the drives lying about sector sizes won't
>>>>> be any
>>>>> better whatever controller you use.
>>>>>
>>>>> roy
>>>>>
>>>>> ----- Opprinnelig melding -----
>>>>>> maybe this might help:
>>>>>> http://www.adaptec.com/en-us/products/controllers/hardware/sas/entry/asc-1045/
>>>>>> it is recognized on a n40l and it is supported by the si3124 driver
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 04/28/2012 09:54 AM, andy thomas wrote:
>>>>>>> For some time now I've successfully been using ZFS RAIDz pools made
>>>>>>> up of 3 x 1
>>>>>>> TB or 3 x 2 TB Western Digital Caviar Black disks in a HP
>>>>>>> MicroServer N36L
>>>>>>> running OI 148 or 151. I'm now thinking of using the newer HP N40L
>>>>>>> microserver
>>>>>>> with 3 x 4 TB disks (Hitachi DeskStart 7K4000) which have 4096 byte
>>>>>>> sectors. Can
>>>>>>> anyone foresee a problem with this?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I plan to set up several of these storage servers in mirrored pairs
>>>>>>> so I want to
>>>>>>> make sure this will work before ordering anything.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Thanks in advance for any comments or advice,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Andy
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> ---------------------------------
>>>>>>> Andy Thomas,
>>>>>>> Time Domain Systems
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Tel: +44 (0)7866 556626
>>>>>>> Fax: +44 (0)20 8372 2582
>>>>>>> http://www.time-domain.co.uk
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> OpenIndiana-discuss mailing list
>>>>>> OpenIndiana-discuss at openindiana.org
>>>>>> http://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/openindiana-discuss
>>>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>> ---------------------------------
>> Andy Thomas,
>> Time Domain Systems
>>
>> Tel: +44 (0)7866 556626
>> Fax: +44 (0)20 8372 2582
>> http://www.time-domain.co.uk
>
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---------------------------------
Andy Thomas,
Time Domain Systems
Tel: +44 (0)7866 556626
Fax: +44 (0)20 8372 2582
http://www.time-domain.co.uk
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