[plug] musing on HDD types (William Kenworthy)

William Kenworthy billk at iinet.net.au
Sun Apr 25 19:55:56 AWST 2021


Thanks Shaun,

    good points.  I have MFS set up as a single disk per host except in
one case where there are two matched WD Greens.  Data flows are via a
VLAN segmented network between hosts so are isolated.  MFS is a
chunkserver system and isn't even close to RAID in concept so avoids its
issues.  The MFS recommendations which I largely followed are to use raw
disks with XFS - if you have a JBOD, LVM or RAID underlying a storage
area it will defeat some of the failure detection and mitigation
strategies MFS uses.  With MFS a complete host failure will only take
down its storage and the MFS will completely self-heal without data loss
around the failure as long as there is spare space and enough recovery
time.  Currently I can take any two or three smaller chunkservers
completely off-line at the same time with no lost data or effect on
users and once healed the data redundancy is restored.

I have a habit of collecting castoff's and re-purposing hardware so very
little of my gear is a similar purchase in timing or type - something
that MFS deals with quite elegantly as its mostly independent of
operating systems/hardware - I am even mixing 32bit and 64bit operating
systems on arm, arm64 and intel and while I currently use Gentoo/openrc
there is no reason I cant use a different linux on each host :)

I would think the response times for 8TB and above are because they are
mostly SMR, not the data density per se?  Can you confirm as I don't
think its a problem with CMR drives?  WD and Seagate have been caught
out sneaking SMR drives into NAS (where resilvering and SMR are a real
problem) and other product lines and have suffered some consumer
backlash because of it - Both companies now have lists of which drive
and type are SMR or CMR.

One point I would highlight is USB connected disks can be a problem
(reliability of the connection, throughput is fine), particularly if UAS
is involved and no-name adaptors.  Unfortunately for me all bar the
Intel host with an M.2NVME drive they are either builtin USB3 or no-name
USB3 adaptors so I can speak to experience ...

BillK


On 25/4/21 6:38 pm, plug_list at holoarc.net wrote:
>
> My 2 cents (and apologies if this has been covered already):
>
> I went the other route of building a NAS and having storage off the
> NAS instead of vSAN or Distributed File system approach. My
> experience/thoughts with consumer grade hardware on my NAS (using
> mdadm and ZFS):
>
>  1. Run the same speed etc ideally in the same RAID group (not sure if
>     mooseFS counters this with using RAM as cache?). I have been
>     caught out with thinking I was getting 7.2K RPM drive just find
>     the manufacture changed drive speeds between different sizes in
>     the same series of drives (e.g. WD Red I think). Personally I
>     dislike 5.9k RPM drives...unless they're in big Enterprise SAN/S3
>     solution.
>  2. Uses different brands and *batch numbers - *last thing you want is
>     have bad batch and they all start failing around the same time -
>     e.g. buying 5 x WD blues from same store at the same time is bad
>     idea (and yes its pain).
>  3. 8 TB and above drives have long response latency (due to density)
>     and thus be careful what configuration you use and make sure it
>     can handle long build time
>  4. I have had drives die from HGST, Seagate and WD over the
>     years...HGST died the quickly and were pain to replace under
>     warranty from memory.
>
> -Shaun
>
> On 25/04/2021 3:26 pm, Benjamin wrote:
>> It's not worth getting anything other than cheapest non-SMR drives
>> IMO for nearly any use case... you can get performance by aggregating
>> enough drives anyways
>>
>> On Sun, Apr 25, 2021 at 3:25 PM Benjamin <zorlin at gmail.com
>> <mailto:zorlin at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     LizardFS is a bag of hurt with dead development. Proceed with
>>     hella caution if you go that route. I hope it changes and becomes
>>     worth pursuing though.
>>
>>     MFSpro is justifiable around 50TiB and up, until then it's not
>>     really worth it.
>>
>>     On Sun, Apr 25, 2021 at 3:22 PM William Kenworthy
>>     <billk at iinet.net.au <mailto:billk at iinet.net.au>> wrote:
>>
>>         Thanks Ben and Paul - this backs up my readings/experience.
>>
>>         I will shortly need a new archive drive because I have lest
>>         than 80Gb left on the 2Tb WD green I have been using for a 
>>         few years.  As performance isn't an issue I will likely go
>>         with a Seagate Barracuda this time (still debating shingled
>>         or not because this use is more cost sensitive than
>>         performance on writing new data across a network - so low
>>         priority, busy, but not excessively so when in use - I am
>>         happy to allow time for the shingling resilvering to complete
>>         as long as it doesn't impact time to actually backup the data
>>         too much.)
>>
>>         Moosefs is more difficult to quantify whats needed - currently:
>>
>>         8 hosts (8 HDD, 1x M2.SSD, 6x arm32, 1x arm64 and 1x intel -
>>         all odroid using gentoo)
>>
>>         ~21Tb space, 3/4 in use. I could delete some as there is
>>         duplicate data stored so if I lose a drive I can reclaim
>>         space easily as well as decrease the goal in some places.
>>
>>         As well, I am using storage classes.  High use data has
>>         mostly 1 chunk on the intel/SSD for performance and others on
>>         HDD's.  I have sc's ranging from 1 to 4 copies with 2, 3 and
>>         4 in common use ... for example things like VM's where there
>>         are hot spots with temp file creation I have 2 copies (2SH)
>>         whereas backups and user data have 4 copies 4HHHH or 4SHHH
>>         depending on priority (eg, /home).  Currently I have one WD
>>         Green drive I would already toss if in a commercial system,
>>         and two Seagate NAS drives I am not totally happy with.
>>
>>         For these, definitely non-shingled (CMR) 7200rpm around 4TB
>>         seems ideal - but is a NAS optimised drive useful or a waste
>>         for moosefs? - vibration of nearby drives is the only thing I
>>         can think of.  Some are bound together (5x odroid HC2) and
>>         some are in pairs in relatively heavy PC case baymounts
>>         (removed/pinched - from my sons ongoing gaming PC build :)
>>         placed on a desk.  I am staring to lean towards the WD blacks
>>         for this, but the HGST lines WD are starting to integrate are
>>         interesting though more expensive ...
>>
>>         I would love to have MFSpro but cant justify it as super
>>         uptime isn't necessary, EC isn't really attractive at my
>>         scale and multiple masters isn't essential as I have plenty
>>         of alternative systems I could bring in quickly ... though I
>>         am watching lizardfs and just might jump to it to get the
>>         multiple masters that is in the free tier.
>>
>>         BillK
>>
>>
>>         On 25/4/21 1:19 pm, Benjamin wrote:
>>>         +1 to all of it, cheers Paul.
>>>
>>>         I think it's worth going for the cheapest externals you can
>>>         get, shucking them, then using MooseFS since you're already
>>>         planning to.
>>>
>>>         I'd use copies=3 and if you're storing more than 50TB talk
>>>         to me about mfspro.
>>>
>>>         On Sun, 25 Apr 2021, 13:03 Paul Del, <p at delfante.it
>>>         <mailto:p at delfante.it>> wrote:
>>>
>>>             Hello Bill
>>>
>>>             My 2 cents worth
>>>
>>>             I am sure you know the common things that can increase
>>>             your hard drives life and performance:
>>>             Temperature
>>>             Humidity
>>>             VIbration
>>>             Heavy Writes
>>>             Heaving Logging
>>>             Clean/Reliable power
>>>             Data throughput
>>>
>>>             The rust hard drives I have seen the most failures with
>>>             are: (I recommend avoiding)
>>>             WD Green
>>>             WD Blue
>>>             Hitachi Deskstar
>>>             (Not The server drives)
>>>
>>>             The rust hard drives I recommend the most are:
>>>             WD Black 7200rpm or better
>>>             Seagate 7200pm or better
>>>             (Not Red, Blue, Green, Purple)
>>>
>>>             If you are doing the moose distribute setup
>>>             You could always choose two different brands/types
>>>
>>>             if you want to know more specific things about which
>>>             hard drive failures. Check out this from backblaze, I am
>>>             sure there's more around. Which is one Benjamin sent
>>>             around ages ago.
>>>             https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-hard-drive-stats-for-2020/
>>>             <https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-hard-drive-stats-for-2020/>
>>>             https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-hard-drive-stats-q2-2020/
>>>             <https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-hard-drive-stats-q2-2020/>
>>>
>>>             Thanks Paul
>>>
>>>
>>>             On Sat, 24 Apr 2021, 09:02 William Kenworthy,
>>>             <billk at iinet.net.au <mailto:billk at iinet.net.au>> wrote:
>>>
>>>             > Just musing on what changes I could make to streamline
>>>             my systems:
>>>             >
>>>             > After a recent stray "r m  - r f " with a space in it
>>>             I ended up
>>>             > removing both most of my active data files, VM's etc
>>>             ... and the online
>>>             > backups - ouch!
>>>             >
>>>             > I have restored from offline backups and have noticed
>>>             a ~10years old WD
>>>             > green drive showing a few early symptoms of failing
>>>             (SMART).
>>>             >
>>>             > With the plethora of colours now available (!) now
>>>             what drive is best for
>>>             > a:
>>>             >
>>>             >     1. moosefs chunkserver (stores files for VM's,
>>>             data including the
>>>             > mail servers user files, home directories and of
>>>             course the online
>>>             > borgbackup archives - the disks are basically hammered
>>>             all the time.)
>>>             >
>>>             >     2. offline backups (~2tb data using borgbackup to
>>>             backup the online
>>>             > borgbackup repo, used twice a week for a few minutes
>>>             at a time.)
>>>             >
>>>             > My longest serving drives are WD greens 2Tb which
>>>             until now have just
>>>             > keep ticking along.  The failing drive is a WD Green -
>>>             I have run
>>>             > badblocks on it overnight with no errors so far so it
>>>             might have
>>>             > internally remapped the failed sectors ok - I am using
>>>             xfs which does
>>>             > not have badblock support.  Most drives spent previous
>>>             years in btrfs
>>>             > raid 10's or ceph so they have had a hard life!
>>>             >
>>>             > Newer WD Reds and a Red pro have failed over the years
>>>             but I still have
>>>             > two in the mix (6tb and 2tb)
>>>             >
>>>             > Some Seagate Ironwolfs that show some SMART errors
>>>             Backblaze correlate
>>>             > with drive failure and throw an occasional USB
>>>             interface error but
>>>             > otherwise seem OK.
>>>             >
>>>             > There are shingled, non-shingled drives, surveillance,
>>>             NAS flavours etc.
>>>             > - but what have people had success with? - or should I
>>>             just choose my
>>>             > favourite colour and run with it?
>>>             >
>>>             > Thoughts?
>>>             >
>>>             > BillK
>>>             _______________________________________________
>>>             PLUG discussion list: plug at plug.org.au
>>>             <mailto:plug at plug.org.au>
>>>             http://lists.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug
>>>             <http://lists.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug>
>>>             Committee e-mail: committee at plug.org.au
>>>             <mailto:committee at plug.org.au>
>>>             PLUG Membership: http://www.plug.org.au/membership
>>>             <http://www.plug.org.au/membership>
>>>
>>>
>>>         _______________________________________________
>>>         PLUG discussion list: plug at plug.org.au <mailto:plug at plug.org.au>
>>>         http://lists.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug <http://lists.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug>
>>>         Committee e-mail: committee at plug.org.au <mailto:committee at plug.org.au>
>>>         PLUG Membership: http://www.plug.org.au/membership <http://www.plug.org.au/membership>
>>         _______________________________________________
>>         PLUG discussion list: plug at plug.org.au <mailto:plug at plug.org.au>
>>         http://lists.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug
>>         <http://lists.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug>
>>         Committee e-mail: committee at plug.org.au
>>         <mailto:committee at plug.org.au>
>>         PLUG Membership: http://www.plug.org.au/membership
>>         <http://www.plug.org.au/membership>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> PLUG discussion list: plug at plug.org.au
>> http://lists.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug
>> Committee e-mail: committee at plug.org.au
>> PLUG Membership: http://www.plug.org.au/membership
>
> _______________________________________________
> PLUG discussion list: plug at plug.org.au
> http://lists.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug
> Committee e-mail: committee at plug.org.au
> PLUG Membership: http://www.plug.org.au/membership
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.plug.org.au/pipermail/plug/attachments/20210425/1d6dd6bd/attachment.html>


More information about the plug mailing list