Show off your rig..

[CBers 7450]

i like stablebit, been using it for years.

 

I've been using DriveBender for years.

 

DB and SB were born out of the demise of DriveExtender.

[PVTD 37]

@@CBers my experience with SS was simple:

- Set up spaces in parity

- good speeds

- after a month I had a 10% speed left of the initial 100%, drives received errors but when moved to a different PC they worked fine.

- could not fix it after many forum searches and tweaks

- bought StableBit

- SS should be discontinued

[MSattler 390]

Just added a Quantum LB6M 10Gb switch I picked up on Ebay for $170.   I put in Mellanox ConnectX-2 NIC's to both unRaid servers, and my workhorse, Emby, and ESXi host.   Love having 10GB connectivity.

 

I also picked up a Super Micro 1U with 2 x E5645's, and 64MB of memory that I'm using as my new ESXi server.  Am loving life right now.

 

Now, to decide on whether to keep the i7-6600 with Hardware transcoding, or switch over to a dual E2660 and just do all CPU transcoding....

oh decisions....

[CBers 7450]

@@CBers my experience with SS was simple:

- Set up spaces in parity

- good speeds

- after a month I had a 10% speed left of the initial 100%, drives received errors but when moved to a different PC they worked fine.

- could not fix it after many forum searches and tweaks

- bought StableBit

- SS should be discontinued

 

So best to stay with the devil you know then

[PVTD 37]

I personally recommend it yes, but I am no expert.

[CBers 7450]

Love having 10GB connectivity.

 

 

Not to the clients though

[MSattler 390]

Not to the clients though

 

Nah don't need it to the clients though.   Besides 10Gbe Nics are expensive, and I don't want to recable everything with Cat6.  1Gbe to my clients is more than enough.   

 

For me the reason to switch to 10Gbe on the backend was so that transfers between unraid servers were faster,  and the pipe between Emby Server and the storage servers were bigger.   

[Guest asrequested]

I just got some connectx-3 dual port cards. Love them. My switch runs much cooler than when I was using the X540-T2 cards

[PenkethBoy 2068]

@

 

Interesting - how much is Much?

[Guest asrequested]

@

 

Interesting - how much is Much?

I don't know the actual number, but the air coming out and feeling the case, there's a notable difference in temperature. And when I took the X540 cards out, they were pretty warm. I'm only using one port on the Mellanox cards when I was using two on the others, so that is probably a factor. Edited February 28, 2017 by Doofus

[mediacowboy 438]

Who's the Storage Spaces expert around here please?

 

Built my new server and wondering if I should continue using DriveBender, or use SS.

 

Thoughts?

 

@@mediacowboy

I haven't used SS but a buddy of mine has and it's really not much different in my opinion of DB. With my new server build I don't plan on switching as II already have two license for DB.

[CBers 7450]

I haven't used SS but a buddy of mine has and it's really not much different in my opinion of DB. With my new server build I don't plan on switching as I already have two license for DB.

Yes, sounds like the best idea staying with what we know

 

Have to make sure Anthony keeps up the support.

 

You upgraded to v2.5 yet?

[mediacowboy 438]

I tried and it messed something up. So I plan on the new server start at that version move everything over and try again.

[CBers 7450]

Sounds similar to what I'm about to do.

 

Install DB, then plug discs in from old server and let DB re-create the pool

[Guest asrequested]

@ Just a point to make your life easier - you dont have to have drive letters for all your pool drives in DrivePool - just mount them to a directory or just have no mount point at all

Nice tip, thanks. I removed the pooled drive letters, last night

[BAlGaInTl 288]

@@BAlGaInTl I know it will most probably throttle down a lot depending on how hot it gets. My Surface has a 2.7Ghz CPU, but it works for like 10 seconds and throttles down to 1ghz easy... Kinda useless to have such powerful CPU haha

 

I haven't really pushed it... It's only 20W TDP... pretty good for 8 cores.

[PenkethBoy 2068]

Nice tip, thanks. I removed the pooled drive letters, last night

did you mount them to a directory?

 

Edited March 1, 2017 by PenkethBoy

[Guest asrequested]

did you mount them to a directory?

 

No, I just removed the drive letters. They don't appear in windows explorer, anymore. So all I see are the single drives and pools....which I like.

[PenkethBoy 2068]

ok - no prob

 

if you do need to access the drives its a lot easier to do so if they are mounted

 

otherwise its

 

\\?\balhblahsf;jfj\somename\smoename\filename.ext

[Guest asrequested]

ok - no prob

 

if you do need to access the drives its a lot easier to do so if they are mounted

 

otherwise its

 

\\?\balhblahsf;jfj\somename\smoename\filename.ext

 

If i need to access them, I'll just add the letter, temporarily. But I can't imagine I'll need to

[Guest asrequested]

Just added a Quantum LB6M 10Gb switch I picked up on Ebay for $170.   I put in Mellanox ConnectX-2 NIC's to both unRaid servers, and my workhorse, Emby, and ESXi host.   Love having 10GB connectivity.

 

I also picked up a Super Micro 1U with 2 x E5645's, and 64MB of memory that I'm using as my new ESXi server.  Am loving life right now.

 

Now, to decide on whether to keep the i7-6600 with Hardware transcoding, or switch over to a dual E2660 and just do all CPU transcoding....

oh decisions....

 

Mellanox aren't supporting the X-2 cards for win 10. Test your actual bandwidth.

 

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/mellanox-connectx-2-en-and-windows-10.6991/

 

http://www.mellanox.com/page/winof_matrix?mtag=windows_sw_drivers

[CBers 7450]

@ Just a point to make your life easier - you dont have to have drive letters for all your pool drives in DrivePool - just mount them to a directory or just have no mount point at all

That could cause pool problems if the drives are accessible outside the pool.

 

Not something we'd recommend doing on the DriveBender forums, except in an emergency.

[Swynol 375]

If i need to access them, I'll just add the letter, temporarily. But I can't imagine I'll need to

 

I never used to have the drive letters assigned as it looks neater. however recently after a reboot the drives were missing from my pool, i had to add drive letters to all the drives before Drivepool would see them again. 

 

I also have them mounted to a share which works if i need to access single drives

[MSattler 390]

Mellanox aren't supporting the X-2 cards for win 10. Test your actual bandwidth.

 

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/mellanox-connectx-2-en-and-windows-10.6991/

 

http://www.mellanox.com/page/winof_matrix?mtag=windows_sw_drivers

 

Working great for me, not getting full bandwidth, but also am not running jumbo frames on the Emby server either because of issues with the Nvidia Shields when Jumbo Frames is enabled.

[PenkethBoy 2068]

That could cause pool problems if the drives are accessible outside the pool.

 

Not something we'd recommend doing on the DriveBender forums, except in an emergency.

Not with DP no issue as you can have data outside the pool on pool drives which is ignored by DP (shows in DP as "other" data) other than counting available space

 

Having mount points or letters or none does not affect windows - if a drive goes missing its something else causing the issue e.g drivers etc etc

 

I prefer mount points (which are easy to setup) as the drives are not listed in explorer but you can get to drive if needed simply by going to the mount directory and clicking on the "folder" for the drive