Post pictures of your storagenode rig(s)

Node Operators
1227

Something is very wrong with the fans. None is aligned with the heatsink fins direction, let alone its absolutely inadequate if you want airflow and not just fans looking expensive.I would use actual fans, not noctua, and ensure airflow is laminar and everting is aligned. I assume there are fans behind drives as well?

If you want low noise ask AI to create software fan controller for you. (I’ve done just that and saved another 5 watts on airflow). Depending on what mlb you are using there might be already fan controller — for example, the popular nuvoton BMC chips have Smart Fan IV profile that you can feed HDD temperatures to in software. Aspeed chips don’t expose such interface but in this case you can drive fans in software. (BTW - pi(d) controller won’t work well for this, use segmented curves with hysteresis instead)

Depends on what else are you going to store there and access patterns. You can add (and remove, if your array is just mirrors) special device later. You can also add/remove slog and/or l2 arc anytime

Start without any caching or special devices, then measure performance over few days of steady typical use. This will inform what you need if anything. Maybe the right thing to do would be removing ram, not adding more hardware.

1228

Thank you for the kind words all

@Roxor correct; it’s that exact sliger model. I’ve not slid the motherboard tray all the way into the chassis yet, giving it an extra ~10cm of working space, which really, really is a lot in that case. I don’t like the performance loss of running RAIDz2, and I really, really don’t like the performance loss of not having two striped vdevs; I’ll stay on RAIDz1 on 5 physical devices. Makes a future expand much easier too, albeit it’s a bit of a moot point with zfs volumes now being able to be expanded upon.

@snorkel the motherboard in here does not matter much; it’s just a placeholder. Some gaming Gigabyte board I had in an older sff machine; AMD 3600x, 16GB RAM and Noctua NH-L12 cooler.

Will be replaced with a Gigabyte MJ11-EC1, which is in the mail. That will have 128GB ECCRAM, CPU is an embedded EPYC3151. I’ll be utilizing the 8x onboard SATA ports together with an M.2 addincard for additional 6x ports. 14 is more than I need right now.

@andrew2.hart yes, it is. The side mounted fan is unconventional, but the entire chassis is only 15" deep, so it’s not possible to get a normal fanwall behind the drives. The drives are suspended with a ~10mm gap inbetween them, so cooling with be a nonissue.

I just have a rack at home; no cold isles; no fancy AC equipment. Thermal load of the box is less than 150 watts, cooling won’t be an issue.

@arrogantrabbit looked forward to suggestions and scrutiny from you! :slight_smile: CPU cooler cannot be turned due to boardlayout. Won’t matter; swapping to another board - Gigabyte MJ11-EC1.
Regarding cooling, the drive spacing gives so much air, that ambient cooling is almost enough, (mid 40s with fans OFF), and with fans on at ~1000 RPM drive temperatures is mid 30s.

Thank you for linking your fan control. Currently the noctuas are good enough, but if I do decide to upgrade to 120.38 fans, I’ll most definitely take a deeper look.

Disks will be 2x RAIDz1 volumes striped together, so removing the special device is not quite possible, but you’re right, it’s much better to look at performance without any caching, and go from there.

The box will house and host all my StorJ and store but not host files. Immich data will live on the box, but the app will be hosted by another box, most likely a M2 Mac Mini. That data will be backed up at another location. Movies, TV-shows and most other data will ditto, but not backed up externally.

1229

lol I just assumed it was in the data centre since that’s all I’m doing at the moment. I hate these AI servers - 8 GPUs and 6 3000W power supplies - what a stupid design. Our racks can’t provide that much power

1230

I have a huge problem with this mlb conceptually. It is great on first look, but if you start looking carefully, the design decisions they made are a bit questionable.

  1. 2x 1Gbps ethernet. Why? Why two? Why 1 Gbps? Why not 2.5Gbps? Why tie up two PCIE lines with two slow ethernet controllers?
  2. SATA – 4 onboard ports, fine, even though one would suffice; but if you have four, it’s tempting to connect data drives there, but 4 is then too few, and you would need to buy a slimsas-to-4x sata cable, which is surprisingly expensive, and STILL be limited to only sata disks; often SAS disks are cheaper, so you are overpaying there too.
  3. M.2 on the board is 100% gimmick. It’s completely useless. What are you going to plug into there? Just give me a proper PCIE slot and I’ll decide what to stick in this. Oh yes, you can connect m2 to PCIE daughterboard, but it’s an extra expense and fragility. You mentioned m2 sata controllers. They don’t exist in the enterprise. It will have to be some rinky-dink Shenzhen combabulation – so overall reliability will plummet through the floor.
  4. Why do I need two PCIe slots?
    • One is self-inflicted – 2.5Gbps network. Makes a huge difference. 1Gbps is dead. People internet nowadays is faster.
    • Second one – for a proper HBA. Like Broadcom 9500-16i or 8i. Consumes 4 watts, and provides you 16 or 8 devices, sas and sata, and even nvme if needed. There are even 9400-16i on ebay for about $100. That may be what you need.
  5. Nice to see IPMI, but Aspeed 2500 is not exactly a a paragon in power efficiency - rather important for a tiny power efficient board.

It’s mostly a me problem, devices that try to be jack of all trades master of none annoy me beyond reason. This could have been so much better product – instead, it’s a collection of shortcuts and compromises. no surprise gigabyte thew in a towel on a whole product line.

1231

I hide my last node behind the TV. Installed ARMbian linux on the TV BOX and attached 4GB of external HDD.

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1232

This could have used ten seconds of dusting and a photo without flash.

Also, probably storj customers after seeing where is their data actually stored:
:scream:

1233

I suggest you to open the case, that hdd can get some better cooling, or it will die soon.

1234

these HDD’s aren’t very longlived anyways. i guess they are all SMR too

1236

This is proper jank. I love it!

1237

Interesting find on Amazon for when you move your precious nodes to another location… :grin:

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1238

Lol. Classic predatory anxiety marketing.

I just dump disks into grocery bag and shove them in the trunk. Disks are very resilient when turned off. No way I’m wasting money on this protective-instinct grift.

It’s the same nonsense that causes people to buy paint protection film, ceramic coating packages, door-edge guards, wheel protection, and every other garbage dealer upsell for goofy cars, sold to people terrified that a machine used outdoors might show evidence of being used outdoors.

By the way, it’s not just me. Pretty much every disk I received have some scoffs, dents, and signs of rough handling. It’s fine. They are not slow flakes. They are metal objects. They’ll be fine.

See datasheet. They survive 600-1000G acceleration when turned off. This makes the damping of a paper grocery bag entirely adequate.

And imagine there are people who will pay actual money for that….

1239

But but but … I once (once!) read a single article about a single batch of disk rolling on some uneven terrain in a parking lot and they all DIED very fast and quick and ever since I read that one thing on Reddit, my entire life has revolved around that story, and now I like to tell it to anyone I know?? Hello? I installed plex on a Raspberry Pi at home, I am a datacenter, please respect my authority.

1240

Buy a Tesla and go for a drive down the M6 (in England) and then we’ll talk… :wink:

1241

That’s where things would have already gone wrong.

A car should tolerate normal road use. Small rocks, rain, salt, bad pavement, and outdoor exposure are normal aspects of how roads work.

If tesla paint and assembly quality require aftermarket plastic film to survive the M6, the issue is not the M6. The factory did a mediocre job, shipped a turd unfit for its target operating environment, and left owners to patch it with sap and twigs on their own dime.

That’s worse than the anxiety upsell. It’s unadulterated contempt from the vendor towards its customers.

I can somewhat forgive a misguided attempt to protect the paint on some cheap little Dacia Sandero. Horseshit quality is part of the deal there. Necessitating this on a wannabe luxury car is not acceptable.

1242

No argument from me, where the paint quality is concerned…

… says the man who has never driven down the M6. I have a 7 year old car on its 4th (or 5th? Can’t quite remember) windscreen. I assure you, the M6 absolutely is “an issue”.

1243

Fair :). But I drove on post-Soviet “highways” in Soviet cars, so I claim partial credit.

I still disagree. Four or five windscreens in seven years is not just “the M6”. Stones come from traffic ahead, especially trucks. With enough following distance, gravity makes them not a factor .

I say this while currently buying windscreen crack repair resin in almost industrial quantities myself on the regular.

1244

I used to have an old dell server in the boot. I took the disks out the server room, into the “boot” server and drove across to the other server room

1245

And since the Sun is flexing again, causing the climate change melodrama (not us :wink::shushing_face:), here’s an ideea from X, to use that unused port on your precious node (:grin:):

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HEY! I got cake! :face_savoring_food::face_savoring_food::face_savoring_food:

1246

Lol, what a terrible solution.

  • Why does the user want to blow out his USB port. Is he stupid?
  • If cooling is what he wants, why such a dinky fan?
  • Why pot the NAS in the cubby in the first place?

Probably so many other questions to this thing

1247

ELI5: Why is he blowing out his USB port?