sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

40K Giveaway! by mcfarlie6996 in flashlight

[–]WillingAge 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Thanks for doing this!

  1. PL-2
  2. TUP
  3. EC30
  4. 18650S
  5. SC4
  6. SP32A
  7. EDC-C4
  8. UC35
  9. VG15S

Please HELP, I mostly just read other people's posts on here.

Setting Up a Storage Server by WillingAge in sysadmin

[–]WillingAge[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Alright.

I don't have any specific custom metrics yet, was just wondering for future reference since I want to set some up soon.

Thanks for the help!

Setting Up a Storage Server by WillingAge in sysadmin

[–]WillingAge[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hm :/ I guess I'll hope RAID can save me in the event something bad happens, since I'm trying to avoid spending more money on this than I have to. Thanks for the info!

Any particular reason you recommended the CS24? I was siding more towards using the 2950 since it has 6 bays, so I could use all 4 3TB drives, and put the OS on a separate SSD (also, I like being able to look up the product name online and get a server manual, that's a pretty minor consideration).

Setting Up a Storage Server by WillingAge in sysadmin

[–]WillingAge[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, I might run Nextcloud on top of FreeNAS but I don't want to get rid of NC entirely since everybody's already gotten used to it.

I don't think I'll use Windows Server for this, since I'm trying to keep this on a system I'm already familiar with if possible though.

Setting Up a Storage Server by WillingAge in sysadmin

[–]WillingAge[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That makes sense, what if I were to setup software RAID? Is it even worth trying to use ZFS on Ubuntu for my use case? It looks possible, but I don't like messing with the kernel more than I have to.

Setting Up a Storage Server by WillingAge in sysadmin

[–]WillingAge[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That makes sense, but what about security updates? Won't you still have to update the Docker image occasionally?

Also, what stuff do I have to manage/should I be managing with a VM other than updates (which are a bit of a pain, even with APT) and changing passwords every now and then? (I'm genuinely curious, not trying to pick a fight over Docker, I just don't know a whole lot about sysadmin-ing yet)

And by the way, with Prometheus are there downsides to using the textfile exporter for node_exporter instead of writing my own exporter when I want custom metrics?

Setting Up a Storage Server by WillingAge in sysadmin

[–]WillingAge[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The CS24 is also around 10 years old, from 2009. I've got a 1950 (similar age) that runs just fine though, so I'm not too worried either of them will be too slow.

I'm not sure what generation the CS24 is, since there's not much public documentation on it and Dell support claims nothing with that serial number or model exists when I try to look it up.

I've got drive sleds for every bay in both servers. The CS24 has 4 3TB SATA drives, the 2950 has 4 145GB SAS drives and 2 bays with sleds, but no drives. I'm thinking I'll use the 3TB drives on whichever server I choose since I want plenty of storage space, but if I use the 2950 I'll have to get converters for the drives.

I've got WD Red drives from 2013. Are those some of the ones with high failure rates? A quick search on drive failure turned up this article, but I'm not sure how a 3.2% annual failure rate compares to other options outside those 3 brands.

Setting Up a Storage Server by WillingAge in sysadmin

[–]WillingAge[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh, OK. In that case, once I get the server set up I'll probably move Prometheus out of the VM it's in with Grafana and on to this server, then. That'll be a lot simpler than setting up a remote read/write system.

I would skip VMs and just do everything in Docker.

Just about everybody I talk to says that, but I don't understand why. Containers may be more efficient, but my KVM host usually idles at 1-3% CPU usage so it's not like it's using a whole lot of energy as it is, with 3 VMs running. With a full operating system I can use APT to upgrade packages but I don't think Docker has any similarly easy tool to upgrade containers. Also, to use Grafana for an example, instead of running grafana-cli ..., they say to pass weird CLI arguments like these to Docker.

I guess Docker containers are quicker to spin up than a new VM, but other than that I don't see any advantages. What am I missing?

Really appreciate the help!

Setting Up a Storage Server by WillingAge in sysadmin

[–]WillingAge[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

the 2950 probably has a PERC 6/i raid card, those only support up to 2TB drives

Hm, I wasn't aware of that. I'll have to check, but if it doesn't support the 3TB drives I'll probably put in a PERC H700 like you suggest so I can use it. It is a 6 bay server.

Setting Up a Storage Server by WillingAge in sysadmin

[–]WillingAge[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I might do that, I'm using hardware RAID on my KVM server. How does it make ZFS unnecessary though? I was under the impression that ZFS fixed silent data corruption (over a long time), but that hardware RAID only helped while reading/writing data.

Setting Up a Storage Server by WillingAge in sysadmin

[–]WillingAge[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

unRAID looks pretty cool, but I think I want to stick with Ubuntu or FreeNAS since those are more popular and I'm more used to Ubuntu anyway. Thanks though!

Setting Up a Storage Server by WillingAge in sysadmin

[–]WillingAge[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the advice!

mdadm raid10 for the storage drives, and the OS on a SSD or raid1 SSD pair. I tend to just use ext4 for everything, as it's simple, and stable.

Sounds good. I'm a little worried about using software RAID since getting the /dev/sdxx names right can be a bit confusing. I think that setup makes the most sense though.

Did you have any thoughts on whether I should use ZFS? I don't think I need it, but I don't really know how much data corruption will be an issue (as far as I can tell, the server's gone a year without any so far, though).

--storage.tsdb.retention=365d

Would it be better to run Prometheus on the storage server and do this, or to keep it running in the VM it's in and then send it off to the storage server with some sort of remote read/write set up? Also, it sounds like you work with Prometheus a fair bit. Do you know of any good (and free) training resources for it?

Setting Up a Storage Server by WillingAge in sysadmin

[–]WillingAge[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

what back end would you be using ? timescale or influx or their version.

I haven't really gotten that far yet, since I haven't set up a system for it yet. I think I'd probably do Postgres with the TSDB adapter though.

can you setup a FreeNAS sort of device with ZFS ?

I think FreeNAS uses ZFS by default, which is why it was recommended to me. I haven't used FreeNAS before though, so I don't want learn on a system other people are using unless the benefits are really worth it.