AppleRAID-1 & SoftR...
 
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AppleRAID-1 & SoftRAID 5.8.4

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(@bjarnedm)
Posts: 3
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Topic starter
 

I've got a cMP 2010 w/ 2 x 4TB & 2 x 6TB HDs in the trays. Booting is from a Samsung SSD on a PCIe Card

Now, the two 6TB HDs are presently in AppleRAID-1. When I installed SoftRAID 5.8.4, the read/write speed to this AppleRAID fell to about 10 % of what it was beforehand. Removing the SoftRAID driver resolved the issue. Not using AppleRAID-1 isn't an option for me, as I need several of the features in APFS.

My idea was installing the two 4TB HDs in the DVD bays, buying 2 x 6TB HDs more, and formatting the resulting 4 x 6TB HDs in SoftRAID-5; but with this issue rearing it's ugly head, I've decided to go with OpenZFS instead. (& - yes - I've bought a license for SoftRAID)

Conclusion : SoftRAID is incompatible w/ AppleRAID-1.

 
Posted : 01/05/2021 8:51 am
(@softraid-support)
Posts: 8006
Member Admin
 

Its not conceivable how this can be, as all the two respective drivers to is tell the OS who owns a disk. I have never seen this before and we test with Apple RAID and SoftRAID volumes frequently.

Its possible there is a SMART issue, we can test that. Go to SoftRAID preferences and disable SMART checks. Just to see if it makes a difference.

I am guessing ZFS is really slow on that machine. Give some feedback on performance if you don't mind.

You are running Mojave on this machine?

 
Posted : 01/05/2021 10:21 am
(@bjarnedm)
Posts: 3
Active Member
Topic starter
 

@softraid-support I've un-installed the SoftRAID driver & gone full OpenZFS RAIDZ-1 on 4 x 6TB HDs, so at present I don't have the capability to test, as I don't have any surplus HDs I can test on.

Another reason for me going OpenZFS is the advanced capabilities such as datasets & encryption on a per dataset - it's almost like APFS

As to OpenZFS being slow, I don't have any issues as far as I can see :

Skærmbillede 2021 05 02 kl. 13.50

 My workload is primarily VMs (Linux & Windows Server testing) & I've succeeded in getting to 256 GB RAM : 32 GB RAM modules in cMP

I've used OpenCore to get to Catalina. Before that, I used dosdude1 Catalina Patcher. When both OpenZFS 2.0.0 & Carbon Copy Cloner works without issues under Big Sur, I'm upgrading to that.

Except from SoftRAID, I'm a very satisfied OWC customer & I do plan to continue shopping with you.

This post was modified 3 years ago by BjarneDM
 
Posted : 02/05/2021 7:15 am
(@softraid-support)
Posts: 8006
Member Admin
 

@bjarnedm

Good, its possible the early ZFS performance issues on the Mac are resolved. (I have not tested ZFS on the Mac in several years) I know on linux, it has relatively solid performance. It is still for advanced users, however.

We use ZFS in some of our higher end products, such as workgroupd servers, etc.

This post was modified 3 years ago by SoftRAID Support
 
Posted : 20/07/2021 11:41 pm
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