[rescue] Baby needs new sh... oh, wait.

[Phil Stracchino]

On 6/6/21 2:56 AM, Peter Corlett wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 05, 2021 at 11:47:18PM -0400, Phil Stracchino wrote:
>> I'll start over.
> 
>> I think it's time for me to migrate my primary ZFS pool onto larger disks.
>> It's almost full (in fact it WAS full and I had to migrate some storage
>> off it). I wish I could spare the dosh to go 100% solid-state on it, but I
>> can't. It looks like the smart price point right now is to go from 1TB to
>> 4TB drives.
> 
> The smart price point was buying them a month ago. Then prices and lead
> times pretty much doubled overnight. This was at the same time that the Chia
> storage-based cryptocurrency all kicked off. Correlation isn't causation,
> but Chia does seem to be at least partly responsible for pushing an
> already-stressed supply chain over the edge.

Yes.  *sigh*  Yet another fundamentally stupid idea.  I hope the world
gets over the cryptocurrency fad soon.


> Curiously, SSD prices dropped about 20%. The price gap between the two had
> thus narrowed substantially and while 8TB SSDs are still not yet cheap
> enough to pique my interest, it's obvious where things are going and I'm
> sure it pushed some people into building all-flash arrays.

Oh yeah, the FIRST thing I did was check to see whether my budget would
extend yet to going all-flash in the array.  (Sadly, no.)


> Anyway, if you can, try and hold off for a month or two while it all settles
> back down, although it's going to be a while longer before there are any
> real bargains.

Well, the zpool that's degraded right now only holds Windows backups, so
is not really critical.  The main zpool is solid, and just low on space.


> The 4TB Red Plus is currently $104.49 direct from WD's online store. If I
> was building a ZFS array today from 4TB disks and in the USA, it'd be a
> no-brainer to them up on that offer.

Useful data point, thanks.  Though I confess to having never really been
a fan of WD.

> My previous array was made of 4TB HGST Deskstar NAS disks which I was
> getting for around b,125 each in 2017. These were basically enterprise disks,
> as when WD bought HGST, they doubled the price of this model and rebranded
> it as, IIRC, Ultrastar DC HC310. Lovely disks, excellent performance, but
> loud and power-thirsty. That's enterprise disks for you.

Ah yes, I've bought a bunch of HGST (and IBM) Ultrastors in the past.
Very good drives.  Most of the ones I've found are reconditioned.  No.
Just no.  I did spot the WD DC HC310s though.


> I really don't like Seagate's consumer drives and give them a wide berth.
> Their SMR implementation is particularly horrible: the drive firmware goes
> out of its way to fake being non-SMR and the one I tested ignored TRIM and
> ZBC/ZAC commands which would help mitigate the shoddy performance.

That too is useful to know.  Which category would you consider their
Ironwolf Pro to fall into?


> If stock of SATA disks remains tight, you could always investigate SAS
> disks. SAS controllers based on the older SAS2008 chipset are pretty cheap
> these days (I paid b,90, which is comparable to an 8-port SATA controller),
> and you can mix-and-match SAS and SATA disks on them.

Given that these are going into a Sun Thor, I don't know that that's an
option.


-- 
  Phil Stracchino
  Babylon Communications
  phils at caerllewys.net
  phil at co.ordinate.org
  Landline: +1.603.293.8485
  Mobile:   +1.603.998.6958