hardware

Experimenting with compression off

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Now that the new storage is in place, I thought to test with compression on and off. Perhaps also use both lz4 and zstd. For reference, this is one of a series of posts regarding compression testing on zpools: Experimenting with compression off – you are here Experimenting with compression=lz4 Experimenting with compression=zstd Compression results My plan: create three zpools of two mirrored devices and test. There will be three posts: compression off, […]

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Adding in new NVMe cards and sticks – and replacing two SSDs

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I notice I also worked with some SSDs at the end of this post – I have since amended the title of this post. In this post: FreeBSD 14.3 Today I removed two existing NVMe cards, each with a 1TB stick on it. Those sticks were added to these cards: If you want the same hardware, you can use these links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. These are all

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Leveling out the NVMe cards on the adaptors

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I recently obtained two 4TB NVMe cards and two PCIe adapters, each of which holds two NVMe cards. This is what they looked like fully loaded: The thinner NVMe is the new 4TB card, and the thicker card is the 1TB card, with heatsink, which I’ve had for some time. Yesterday I noticed the NVMe cards were not parallel with the adaptor. Earlier today, I fixed that. First, let’s look at the angles.

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r730-01: the drive replacement plan

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This post is mostly for my benefit, so I can keep track of my plan for adjusting space. It doesn’t contain much of educational value. For what I actually did, see zfs: setting compression and adding new vdevs One recent day, I powered off r730-01 and took inventory of the 16 drive bays. A short overview: [17:36 r730-01 dvl ~] % zpool list NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CKPOINT EXPANDSZ FRAG CAP DEDUP HEALTH

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Dell R730 – The session has timed out waiting for verification of the certificate – slot bifurcation details – plus NVMe plans

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Today I was trying to access my Dell 730 (r730-01) via the remote console. I failed. Twice. First and expected failure First, this was usual and expected. It’s been a problem both at home and at work. It is the inability to access the console via https using the hostname This is what I see: I can get in via IP address though. Second and new-to-me failure Next, after logging in via IP

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Finding out more about nvme on FreeBSD

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Recently I’ve been playing with NVMe to find out more about monitoring for wear. Tried nvme-cli: [17:49 r730-01 dvl ~] % nvme list Failed to scan topology: No such file or directory Seems it is a known problem. Went with this instead: [17:52 r730-01 dvl ~] % sudo nvmecontrol devlist nvme0: Samsung SSD 980 PRO with Heatsink 1TB nvme0ns1 (953869MB) nvme1: Samsung SSD 980 PRO with Heatsink 1TB nvme1ns1 (953869MB) With more information

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Clear the existing good drive and add it to the new zpool

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In recent posts: Doing a bit of stress work on a new HDD x8dtu: adding in the smaller drive Swapping zpools – moving from using main_tank to using data If you have a look over those posts, you’ll see why you never want to downsize a zpool. In this post: FreeBSD 14.2 removing the zfs labels from an drive which was part of a zpool which is no longer in use destroying the

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Swapping zpools – moving from using main_tank to using data

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As mentioned in Doing a bit of stress work on a new HDD, I have a failing 5TB drive which is going to be replace by a 4TB drive. Only about 1.45TB are used, so there’s plenty of space to grow. If you get one thing from this post, don’t be downsizing zpools like this. I would have had much less work and opportunity for error, if I had returned that 4TB drive

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x8dtu: adding in the smaller drive

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I was up at 5:30 AM today. I packed the car and headed out. I arrived within the datacenter at about 8:15 or so. By 8:50, I was on IRC and the photos of the FreeBSD racks were uploading. Since I was going there anyway, I did some inventory and disposal work (a decommissioned server, about 25 old HDD, and various bits and pieces). I must say though, I’m not liking this option.

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Doing a bit of stress work on a new HDD

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As foreshadowed in x8dtu – drive problems, I will be visiting a data center soon to replace a 4TB HDD. The replacement HDD arrived last night. It was unceremoniously tossed onto the front porch by the courier. However, it was properly packaged. I’m sure it’s fine. The original idea: put this drive into a host, and write some data to it, to exercise it a bit. As you will soon learn, that is

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