iSCSI Target Update: Desktop Setup as “Server” Fail

Okay, so not long after yesterday’s post things started to go downhill big time.

The USB 3.0 ports and the docks started to break communication with each other randomly while the eSATA connections failed altogether.

So, it looks as though the desktop board setup will not work.

• MPECS Inc. Blog: A Tentative iSCSI Target Host System Setup
• MPECS Inc. Blog: Update on iSCSI Target via Desktop Hardware

StarTech Renesas USB 3.0 Card

We took the StarTech Renesas USB 3.0 card and installed it in one of our servers here in the shop. We configured the driver and connected two NexStar USB 3.0 docks to a NexStar USB 3.0 hub which was then connected to the USB 3.0 port.

We ran into the same funky behaviours with the NexStar SuperSpeed docks where we could not have more than two of them hooked in with live hard drives no matter what. before t The third drive connection would cycle in and out.

However, the two docks that have been connected to the StarTech card via USB 3.0 hub have been moving data non-stop since yesterday.

We have been moving the original iSCSI target VHDs from the drives we started with to a couple of large drives to consolidate the backups to two drive destinations.

The copy process runs at about 100MB/Second on average. We have moved Terabytes of data between the two docks without a hiccup as of yet.

Plus, we brought the iSCSI Software Target service online and hooked up our largest VHDs to their initiators to allow backups to run last night without a hitch.

StarTech USB 3.0 Drive Dock

As an alternative to the NexStar SuperSpeed docks we have ordered in one of these:

• StarTech 4 Bay eSATA USB 3.0 to SATA Hard Drive Docking Station for 2.5/3.5 HDD
  • P/N: SATDOCK4U3E

It will be interesting to see if the StarTech dock can plug directly into the USB 3.0 card and allow more than one drive to be connected without a USB 3.0 hub.

Conclusion

For now, it is looking like a real server will be needed as our dedicated iSCSI Software Target. :)

Does the HP ProLiant MicroServer count as a “real server”? Well, we will see.

The next step in this investigation is to drop a StarTech USB 3.0 card into one and run through these tests again. If things work out then we will have a very reasonably priced setup for our smaller clients.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Update on iSCSI Target via Desktop Hardware

A while back we published that we were testing a desktop board with Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard as a possible configuration to utilize the two eSATA and two USB 3.0 ports.

• MPECS Inc. Blog: A Tentative iSCSI Target Host System Setup

Here we are almost two weeks later with the setup providing backup targets for a number of different physical and virtual machines and things are moving along though not perfectly.

We had one NexStar USB 3.0 dock connected to a Vantec USB 3.0 hub which then connected to the USB 3.0 port on the motherboard and the other dock connected directly to a USB 3.0 port on the motherboard.

We set things up this way because there is some sort of conflict between the Vantec NexStar USB 3.0 hard drive dock and the USB 3.0 ports on the DQ67xx series Intel Desktop Boards (we have seen this with both DQ67SW and DQ67EP boards).

After our break this last weekend we came back to two of the four drives connected to the box being offline. We had moved things around prior to leaving to free up some space on the workbench however the connections were still online before we left.

The two drives that were offline were in one USB 3.0 dock and one eSATA dock. So, we could not pin the problem on either port set.

The eSATA drive turned out to be a cable that was not sitting quite right in the dock. Once the cable was pulled and re-seated at both ends the drive came online without a hitch.

The USB 3.0 drive however turned out to be the dock and the motherboard not playing nice anymore. We re-seated the cable with nothing happening. We power cycled the dock and sure enough the drive came online . . . and then it went offline, and then on, and then off, and so on.

Once we plugged the dock into the USB 3.0 hub that the other dock was already connected to the drive came online.

So, it is looking like while this setup may have been a good idea on paper the actual implementation is having poor results.

Now the kicker, we purchased a StarTech PEXUSB3S2 card (product site) as we had seen mention of the card being compatible with Windows Server 2008 RTM/R2.

The card arrived and we downloaded the driver:

It looks to be based on the same chip providing USB 3.0 connectivity on the Intel boards. :(

We will still plug the card in and run some tests with it on an actual server configuration. At least we can confirm that the NexStar USB 3.0 drive docks behave the same way when directly plugged into the card as far as the drive coming online and going offline in cycles.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

ShadowProtect Backup Via USB 3.0

This is pretty neat:

A standard 500GB Seagate 7200 SATA drive is plugged into one of the NexStar USB 3.0 docks to run a backup of the drive.

It is averaging about 90MB/Second for the job as of now. The job finished in a little over three minutes averaging 87.5MB/Second!

Compare that to the average 20MB/Second that same drive would have run on a USB 2.0 connection and we can see the time savings benefits right away for the refresh we did on this Data Mule system (previous blog post).

NOTE: We could not get the Vantec NexStar USB 3.0 dock (NST-D300S3) to work when it was plugged directly into the USB 3.0 port on the back of the Intel Desktop Board DQ67SW. We needed to plug a Vantec USB 3.0 Hub (UGT-MH430U3) into the motherboard’s port and then the NexStar into that before any drive would be picked up.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Vantec NexStar SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Hard Drive Dock Do Not Lock Up Intel Server Boards

We have been testing a number of different options to move forward with when it comes to hooking up a hard disk to an SBS 2008, SBS v7, or Windows Server 2008 box for backups.

We are finding that the new NexStar SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Hard Drive Docks (NST-D300S3) are not locking up our Intel server configurations on a warm boot.

Note that because we are handling the bare hard disk a little precaution is required to protect the sensitive electronics on the drive.

We make sure to touch ground before swapping out a hard disk. We also make sure that we _do not_ touch the drive’s electronics.

We store any hard disks in the backup rotation in a standard 3.5” plastic hard disk clamshell to protect them. All drives are appropriately labeled using a labeling device so that we can keep track of the drives.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Thermaltake Silver River Duo USB HDD Enclosure – Fail

A while back we had a bunch of problems with the Vantec NexStar3 enclosures we were using for backups on Intel server board based servers.

A warm boot would stall the server with a blinking cursor just before the BIOS information would show itself.

With the S5000PSLxxxR series and the S3200SH series boards Intel has put a BIOS setting to disable booting to USB so the point is now moot.

We have since gone back to the NexStar3 enclosures.

What we are finding now though is that the power blocks on the Thermaltake Silver River Duo enclosures are bad.

We have Vantecs that have been in operation for a number of years now and to date have not had one bad power block.

We have 6 bad power blocks waiting for their replacement from Thermaltake.

Most of the time when they fail, they do not outright stop the hard drive from spinning up. The status light comes on and the drive does indeed spin up. But, once the system needs to write data to the hard drive the enclosure’s status light will be in activity mode and the server will sometimes lock right up.

Since we sold a lot of these enclosures during the S3000AH and S5000PSLxxx product time period, we are anticipating more failures to come.

Previous posts on the subject:

• New Vantec NexStar 3 version does not like S3000AH Intel Boards
• Intel S3000AH - Vantec vs. Thermaltake USB HDD

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac! (previous blog post)

Windows Live Writer

Intel S3000AH - Vantec vs. Thermaltake USB HDD

A while back we blogged about the changes Vantec made to their 3.5" USB hard drive enclosures: New Vantec NexStar 3 version does not like S3000AH Intel Boards.

Because the ability to remotely warm boot our servers is mission critical, we have been on the hunt for a replacement USB enclosure product.

We found the following Thermaltake products:

Thermaltake BlacX SE

The Thermaltake BlacX SE behaves a lot like a hot swap enclosure would in the system. Power down the unit, plug in the drive, power up the unit and we have access to the hard drive and its contents.

The second product is this 3.5" USB hard drive enclosure:

Thermaltake Silver River DUO Enclosure A2395

The feature that caught our eye on the Silver River Duo enclosure was the USB/eSATA switch:

Thermaltake Silver River DUO - Back

With the Vantec enclosures, there is no switch to disable the eSATA feature.

Occasionally, we collaborate with Kevin of Atkey Tech. On a support call into Intel about a couple of S5000PSLSATA server board issues he was experiencing, he also worked with them on the no warm boot issue with the Vantec NexStar USB enclosures connected to the same board.

Intel indicated that one needed to disable "Legacy USB Support" in the BIOS:

Legace USB Support - Enabled

In the above screen shot, it is shown enabled, because we made sure to check where the setting was at before testing the Thermaltake enclosures.

While disabling that setting did work with that particular S5000PSL server board for Kevin, disabling the setting does not seem to work with the S3000AH series boards.

The server we are testing on is a box that is about to go into production. It is a 1U SR1530AHLX series with a Xeon X3220 Quad Core processor and 4GB of RAM. Storage is provided by two 750GB Seagate ES.2 Enterprise Storage SATA drives in a RAID 1 array. SBS 2K3 R2 Premium is installed, configured, and fully up to date.

The first thing we tried to do after the server was configured and ShadowProtect was installed was to test the warm boots against the Vantec NexStar series we have on the bench.

Sure enough, the server refused to warm boot on a restart requested from the OS while the Vantec NexStar was connected. Even after a cold boot with a quick trip into the BIOS, the server would not warm boot.

We installed a 500GB Seagate 7200.10 SATA drive into the BlacX SE and plugged it into the server. Once the USB detection steps completed, we had a 500GB NTFS formatted drive fully accessible to the OS.

We sent the server into a reboot. The server warm booted with no issues. We cold booted into the BIOS, made a couple of on/off setting changes then saved and exited the BIOS screen into a warm boot. Again, the server booted with no issues.

We then went through the same process with the Thermaltake Silver River DUO and were pleasantly surprised that the server would warm boot from any scenario.

When we first started having trouble with the Vantec enclosures connected to the S3000AH series boards, we put a trouble ticket in with Vantec and began a dialogue with their support team. We have not heard from them since the end of January.

Since the Thermaltake Silver River DUO series don't seem to have the problem, it looks as though we have found a replacement enclosure for the Vantec NexStar USB hard drive enclosures.

The BlacX SE is a pretty good alternative with a couple of caveats:

• The hard drives are bare, thus exposing sensitive electronics to physical handling.
• The hard drives can get very hot due to a lack of air circulation.

We will keep the BlacX SE around for bench work, and start using the Thermaltake Silver River DUOs for our ShadowProtect backup needs from now on.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

New Vantec NexStar 3 version does not like S3000AH Intel Boards

We have been using Vantec NexStar 3 USB 3.5" HDD enclosures with our backup solutions for a long time now.

Just recently though, we have hit a snag: With the NexStar plugged in and turned on, we go to warm boot a server with an S3000AH based server board setup and the server hangs. Cold boot the server and head into the BIOS to make some changes, save them, then warm boot the server and it also hangs.

Vantec recently went through a product revision with their NexStar 3 USB HDD 3.5" enclosures.

Here is a side by side of the previous version (left)and the newest version (right):

Vantec NexStar 3 Left=Old Right=New

The differences are pretty obvious when the two sit side by side:

• New uses a fixed SATA/Power Connector
• New uses far fewer electronic components on the PCB

When we move the the back side of the enclosures where the connectors are located, the differences become even more obvious:

Vantec NexStar 3 Left=Old Right=New

They are a mirror image of each other.

One would assume that the differences in the amount of electronics would be offset by some of them being located on the backside of the PCB on the new unit. This is not the case.

So, we are now in a quandry as we have at least a dozen of these new units either in the field or sitting here in the shop waiting to be delivered to our client sites.

For now, we have been in touch with our supplier to indicate to them that the units are seemingly defective. We will also be looking into an alternative enclosure right away.

We have sent an email into Vantec's support and, when we have a little more time, we may get in touch with Intel about it. For now though, the problem is definitely in Vantec's court.

UPDATE: Vantec has responded already! We provided some more feedback as well as sent a link of a short video of the two problem scenarios we experience on an S3000AH based 1U sitting on our bench in the process of a Swing Migration.

Kudos to Vantec for being so quick to respond!

UPDATE 2008-01-28: It now seems that we can include the Intel S5000PSLSATAR series server board in this situation. We helped out on a new SBS install utilizing that board with dual Xeon 5345 Quad Core processors this last weekend.

The server hung on reboot with the enclosure plugged in and turned on.

We sent a note off to Vantec's tech support to update them on the situation.

We have also ordered in an alternative enclosure made by Thermaltake: Silver River DUO Enclosure. The key feature on this unit is the ability to flip a switch on the back to choose between the USB 2.0 or eSATA interfaces.

We have yet to hear back from Vantec.

Now that we are seeing this issue on more than one server board, when we have more time later this week we will be initiating a support ticket with Intel too.

UPDATE 2008-02-01: We plugged one of the new sled based NexStars into an existing SE7230NH1-E based Pentium D SBS box as part of this particular client moving over to a ShadowProtect based backup solution.

In this case, the SE7230NH1-E does not hang up like the S3000AH or S5000PSLSATAR boards do on a warm boot.

UPDATE 2008-02-05: We just plugged a new sled based NexStar into a server with the Intel SE7520JR2 server board in it.

We warm booted the server after some updates and configuration changes and there was no issue.

The following list will remain at the bottom of this post for clarity:

• Intel SR1560SF and S5400SF Series (SRCASRB RAID) Warm Boot Failure
• Intel S3000AH and AHLX (On board RAID used) Warm Boot Failure
• Intel S5000PSLSATAR (On board RAID used) Warm Boot Failure
• Intel SE7320NH1-E (On board RAID used) Warm Boot Okay
• Intel SE7520JR2 (SRCS16 RAID controller) Warm Boot Okay

The hard drives in the enclosures are all Seagate hard drives with at least 320GB of storage capacity. All of the Seagate hard drives have the 150Gbps jumper removed (Previous blog post).

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.