I too can attest to the immense value and ease of use with using SpinRite. I have used various versions of it over 20+ years to recover/fix all sorts of hard disks and even works on thumb/flash drives. It is a life saver

I checked SpinRite and the video/article. I think this defines whether I can use it or not:


My hardware RAID controller is already telling me that there are sectors which can't be read anymore. SMART is telling that relocating doesn't work. These are errors on the physical level. Now SpinRite will see these errors, try to relocate them and then try to recover the data. That's nice but I have not lost data (was able to recover from backup and run on another RAID config). If relocating would work that would only give me a little time, because the sectors next to the already broken ones will also be nearly broken. These are drives which have been pushing over 100GB of data every day for four years. According to this they are right on the edge of their lifetime.

Would it be really useful to spend $90 on SpinRite, spend a whole day (16x60 minutes) on trying to fix the drives, hoping that after repair they are accepted back into the RAID config, only to have to replace them probably within a year anyway?

Quick calculation of replacement cost for all hardrives:

16x Samsung 850 Pro, 128 GB SSD (MZ-7KE128BW)     €89.90      €1438.40          Database drives, all servers

 6x Western Digital Red, 1 TB HDD (WD10EFRX)      €64.90       €389.40          OS + data drives, update server + www4

 4x Western Digital Red, 750 GB HDD (WD7500BFCX)  €69.90       €279.60          OS + data drives, www3

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Total                                                         €2107.40

That's including VAT and is the lowest price for these parts in The Netherlands.
As I'm also going to have to reinstall the OS on all servers (support for the current installed OS ends this year it would be a good time to replace the HDD's as well. I had to replace a number of HDD's in all servers in the last two years, I'm expecting more to fail.

I still have all the broken drives, I could do a SpinRite run on them.

Ouch, prices for Samsung SSD's went up in The Netherlands

16x Samsung 850 Pro, 128 GB SSD (MZ-7KE128BW)     €99.90      €1598.40          Database drives, all servers

 6x Western Digital Red, 1 TB HDD (WD10EFRX)      €64.90       €389.40          OS + data drives, update server + www4

 4x Western Digital Red, 750 GB HDD (WD7500BFCX)  €69.90       €279.60          OS + data drives, www3

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Total                                                         €2267.40

There is all alternative though, by using an Intel SSD:

16x Intel 535 Serie, 120 GB SSD (SSDSC2BW120H601) €67.90      €1086.40          Database drives, all servers

 6x Western Digital Red, 1 TB HDD (WD10EFRX)      €64.90       €389.40          OS + data drives, update server + www4

 4x Western Digital Red, 750 GB HDD (WD7500BFCX)  €69.90       €279.60          OS + data drives, www3

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Total                                                         €1755.40

On paper the performance of the Samsung and Intel SSD is nearly identical but Userbenchmark does not agree. I have nothing but good experiences with Intel SSD's in a database heavy environment while I have less experience with Samsung SSD's. The Samsung may beat the Intel in performance but I have no clue towards endurance.

Opinions?

Edit: of course there is also the Intel DC S3510 120 GB SSD (SSDSC2BB120G601) specifically geared towards datacenter/server operation. Only €107.90 €100.85...

"These are drives which have been pushing over 100GB of data every day for four years...... "

Take them out, totally reformat, sell them off as second hand (will not get much second hand sale, but better than nothing), and go for new modern ones. No point in taking risks with Server Drives that get hammered across such a wide user base.

Samsung have a new M.2 Enterprise Class Drive out - the 950 Pro, its getting very good reviews both within industry and PC outlets. Can you still achieve what you want with 8 x 256 Gb SSDs in an Array? If so ..... the new Samsung 256GB M.2 NVMe PCIe 950 PRO SSD SM950 would seem to fit the need well. Its an Enterprise Class Drive, and the throughput is superb. Price is around 200 Euros each.

Guru3d Review:

Samsung 950 Pro - Guru 3d Review


The M.2 Enterprise Class is starting to come out in more numbers .... Intel may have one out in that Class, not found it yet, still looking .... the M.2 Enterorise is three times faster than the 850 you quoted.

But in any event, the fact this is an Enterprise Class SSD, keeps it in the frame for you with its Output et al. The only question is will your needs be met with an 8 x 256 Gb SSD array, not 16 x 128Gb ..... I would have thought so, but I have no knowledge of your internal Configuration needs. SCAN have them in stock.

The Price of 8 x 256Gb Samsung 950's hits the spot .... and you will still have space internally in the case for others in the future if needed (that needs checking, but would seem so on the face of it)

SCAN also carry the 512gb version .... but I dont know if it meets you internal Config needs et al

Enterprise level M.2's are only just now coming out as such in useful size/configurations, worth going down that road using the above as a yardstick, as long as others that are compared are also M.2 Enterprise Class.

The 16 drives are divided over three servers. It's not a matter of gigabytes but of redundancy and speed.

They are divided in 8-4-4 configurations, all raid 10.

Could you work 4-2-2 ??

SSDs are vastly more reliable these days ..... forgive if thats a dumb question, I have no knowledge of your internal Configuration in detail

..... maybe with a NAS box on the network for fallback with cheaper drives ?

These SSDs are blazingly fast .... 2200Mbs/900Mbs 270k IOPS

Samsung 950 Pro plugs into the M.2 slot on the newer motherboards, connected to the system through PCIe (usually a direct connection to the processor, like on my ASUS X99-E WS), not SAS or SATA like SSDs/HDDs. I have used the 512G on all of my new machines as the boot drive, and very happy about them, but that is the extend of it. The rest of storage is in terms of the 1T or 2T Samsung 850 Pros. I don't know how one would even go about using more than one of the 950s on a system. I think I have seen only one workstation motherboard for Intel that has two M.2 slots (http://www.gigabyte.us/press-center/news-page.aspx?nid=1313). But that is it. I don't think they are meant to create storage arrays with, yet. If anyone knows otherwise, I would welcome the education.

Thanks
Tuna

There are no M.2 slots in the servers so that would require adding adapter cards which are expensive (good ones).

Plus, it doesn't make sense to buy expensive and fast M.2 sticks, then pay more for an adapter either to plug them into regular PCIe slots or fit them into SATA drive cages, and reduce their speed to SATA 3. Just getting SSDs is cheaper. Now, only if somebody were to build an M.2 storage array board with full speed...

I asked for a quotation for the following products:

16x Intel DC S3510, 120 GB SSD (SSDSC2BB120G601)  5387848 €100.85 €1613.60

 4x Western Digital Red, 1 TB HDD (WD10EFRX)      3532484  €66.26  €265.04

 2x Western Digital Red, 750 GB HDD (WD7500BFCX)  3879825  €65.35  €130.70

 2x Western Digital Se, 1 TB HDD (WD1002F9YZ)     4127463  €86.97  €173.94

 2x Western Digital Black, 750GB HDD (WD7500BPKX) 3841045  €65.82  €131.64

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Totaal                                                            €2313.92

These drives will (in my opinion) offer the best maintenance/upgrade path for BOINCstats. It's a lot of money but it should get us by for the next five years at least which makes it €39 per month. By then the servers themselves will probably die of old age but Amazon (or something similar) may be more affordable then.

Got a €18 discount .

They are still the cheapest so I'm going the gather the funds and order it.

Order placed, delivery expected next week.

I'm going to plan the server upgrades. I'll try to prevent any downtime.

Also, got a number of ideas from the AWS test for further improvements.

OnWards and Upwards ..... nice one

Also on further digging, it seems the M.2 PCIe interface does not (yet) support RAID 0, RAID1, RAID 5 and RAID 10 Looks like RAID is out of the question as a routine event using the M.2 drive for the present anyway..... if it does, its in a bespoke way - I've seen some bespoke M.2 enclosures around, inevitably SUN being one one - with a lot of messing around, which would not be the best plan for BOINC.

Sounds reasonable. Samsung showed some very bad customer support with the EVO 840 performance problems, therefoce I stopped buying Samsung for the moment. And the Intel 535 Serie, well, I newer liked the sandforce based designs for inconsistent perfomance due to the build-in compression (And in the beginning, the firmware was plagued with all sort of compatibility and stability problems).

Crucial is my preferred manufacturer at the moment, but I don't have enough experience with the products yet (and they end up in notebooks and desktops, which is a completely different use case).

Unfortunately the 120GB Intel S3500 SSDs got lost while on transport to the shop. The 240GB Intel S3510 was offered as a replacement and I decided to use them.

Instead of 16 120GB SSDs in 8-4-4 config it will be 10 240GB SSDs in 6-2-2. The 240GB's have double the write speed and a slightly higher read speed so that should be fine.

In addition I will use two 120GB Intel 525 series SSDs for the database binlog. This was going to be run on two of the S3500's.

As suggested in this thread there are now three donor levels:
€2-19.99: level 1, b/w crown
€20-49.99: level 2, silver crown
€50 and up: level 3, gold crown
This is based on the amount donated in the last 365 days.

Aaaaaand..... My crown disappeared... And, my floating black profile head icon.

Aaaaaand, they are back. Thanks!

Did you mean for the crowns to be clickable and be a link to the current thread? Or, should they be a link to the Donate page?

Donors are now shown on the date page.

They should (and are now) clickable and go to the donate page.