Powerd not work, harddisk spinning does not work

[pAt84]

Hi,

since my 2-bay synology NAS got a little small, I decided to build myself a FreeNAS-based NAS. Unfortunately, so far I am not impressed. I got two rather large problems and a smaller one.

The NAS:
Mainboard: Asrock AM1H-ITX
4x2TB WD HDD (2x RED, 2x GREEN)
CPU: AMD Athlon 5150
8 GB DDR3 RAM
IN WIN Thin Mini-ITX 120 Watt PSU

Problems:

1. powerd does not work. As soon as I enable it, the entire system turns instable, usually just rebooting after one or two hours. Consequently the CPU just runs at 1,6 GHz with it's highest voltage setting all day long, which is really not necessary. There doesn't seem to be a version of k10ctl for FreeBSD for me to set the frequency and voltage manually. The bios has no so option.

2. The drives do not spin down automatically -- the necessary flags are set to 5 minutes. I can however send them to standby manually by invoking "ataidle -S 5 /dev/ada0" but once they are reactivated this does not work anymore. While idle power draw with drives active is at 32 Watts, it drops to 22 Watts when the drives spin down. This is quite a nice drop, which I would really want to have.

3. Transfer rates using Windows and SMB are good (~100 MB per second). However, using Linux and SMB this drops to ~35MB/s. While I can see this being a problem of the Linux+SMB combination, I do not understand why m ysftp transfers are also limited to ~35MB/s when using Linux.

Any suggestions?
Thanks
Pat

 

[no_connection]

First of all powerd isn't that useful, and hurts performance. At least in my case. And AMD being a minority it isn't clear what happens and have been known to be hit or miss.
Second have you set up .system dataset that isn't on you main pool that you want to spin down? Logs and performance graphs are written often so drives will never spin down.

Suggestion would be to spend some time to read around as both 1 and 2 are readily answered in the forum.
Not sure about 3 as I don't use Linux.

 

[cyberjock]

1. powerd isn't too useful for newer CPUs. AMDs are even less friendly with powerd since AMD hasn't provided much code to FreeBSD to make their hardware work well with FreeBSD/FreeNAS. This is why if you look at our recommended hardware stickies they all talk about Intel and there is no mention of AMD except to avoid them.

2. They shouldn't. FreeNAS is an always-on appliance and that means always-on. Additionally the .system dataset has writes to it at regular intervals so sleeping disks that are part of the pool with the .system dataset is impossible.

3. I can guarantee you that Linux with SMB can provide amazing performance. In fact, I get better speeds when I'm on linux than on windows 7 with my dual boot setup. So you should investigate your client-side on linux to see where the hangup is. But I can assure you that linux has always outperformed windows with SMB when I've used it.

My suggestion for #1 and 2 is to give our documentation and forum stickies a read. I get the impression you jumped into the pool before you really knew what you were getting yourself into. Your hardware isn't the most recommended at all and you are likely to have your own problems to deal with if you decide to "go at it on your own".

FreeNAS is designed as an appliance-type OS. It is not your standard all-purpose OS. It's designed with certain things expected and certain things already decided for you. If these ideas aren't palatable to you then FreeNAS is probably not for you.

 

[pAt84]

Hi,

even after looking around a bit, I did not find hardware recommendation stickies. It is true, I did not search for them before I build the NAS simply because I was assuming it can run equally well with an AMD CPU, which btw is providing good performance and adds hardware-based encryption.

So basically I have to live with my harddisks being fully powered all the time? What kind of sense does thi smake? Why use extra electricity in times when I do not need it? Why even have the spin-down option then? Multiple pools?

Best
Pat

 

[Dennis K.]

The .system dataset is most likely responsible for the drives not being able to spin down. You can however put the system dataset onto another pool, like an additional usb thumb drive. This is what I did and it works. For more safety I created my system pool off of 2 usb thumbdrives and configured them as a mirror. In the end, they are only usb sticks with limited durability.

 

[cyberjock]

The idea is that the box is up 24x7. This is what companies want and this is why its designed that way. Also it's fairly well known that leaving disks on 24x7 vice spinning them up and down regularly seems to increase their lifespan. I'm not spinning down my disks, on purpose. The HDD Standby is more of a leftover from a time before .system existed and such. If you really want to set a spindown the only good way to do it is add another pool and put the .system dataset on that. Be warned that a lot of hardware ignores the HDD Standby setting anyway because the SATA/SAS controller drivers in FreeBSD don't support it.

It works for some, not for others. Considering it shortens disk lifespan if not reasonably set (5 minutes is a horrible idea) I take the stance that the people that it doesn't work for are basically set free from having premature disk failures.

The stickies are at the top of the various sections of the forum and have the pushpin icons. Not sure why you aren't seeing them.. they are DEFINITELY there.

 

[pAt84]

Oh, I see them. I just can't find the one that says "do not buy AMD".

The .system dataset is most likely responsible for the drives not being able to spin down. You can however put the system dataset onto another pool, like an additional usb thumb drive. This is what I did and it works. For more safety I created my system pool off of 2 usb thumbdrives and configured them as a mirror. In the end, they are only usb sticks with limited durability.

Thanks for the suggestion. I guess I could always buy an SSD for the miniPCI-Express slot on the board and move it there. Then again, I could put debian on there, have working powerd and a ton of other options.

Best
Pat

 

[joeschmuck]

@pAt84
Nothing says do not buy AMD and there are some AMD CPUs which work fine such as the FX series (like mine) however some of the "A" series do not work well with FreeBSD 9 which is what the current FreeNAS is based on. Based on your responses in this thread I don't think FreeNAS is for you. Your system doesn't have ECC RAM as well which in a ZFS file system it is mandatory to ensure you do not have file corruption due to a RAM error. There is more to read on about this if you are interested, and if you are planning to use FreeNAS then you should read that info.