Large Scale Burst Mining Operation
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@Colby3316 I have been doing similar research. so far I was able to find a hardware that can take upto 60 drives or 45. if you have 10TB hard drive then you can get 600TB in a single unit.
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backuppods with 60 drives. https://backuppods.com/collections/backblaze-storage-pod-6-0/products/backblaze-storage-pod-6-0-kit-60-drive-480tb-storage-server
if you use 60 drives of 8TB then you get 480TB or 10TB in which you get 600TB. -
this is a more expensive powerful hardware. I think this one is not very cost effective. It would take you forever to reach break-even point with current price.
http://www.45drives.com/products/storinator-xl60-configurations.php
I have contacted the company and it will cost you around 5,500 for the 8TB with 60 drives and two unites of the hardware itself. -
I think you can use a regular motherboard with a really good GPU. I think you can have upto 500TB with adding extra PCIe and USB3 hubs. I am still researching on this. We can help each other and find the most cost effective solution.
we need to know below points.
- Cheapest motherboard that can support multiple PCIe
- Good CPU that can support 500TB
- A good GPU like AMD 480 "thanks for @luxe for this information"
- HDD, 7200RPM or 5400RPM?
- I think to speed up the plotting you need 64GB of RAM.
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@Colby3316 Concerning HDD vs. SSD :
@FrilledShark said in Mining 101:
Best storage media (HDD vs SSD)
If you want to mine Burst, your first priority should be disk space. Speed is your second priority. Therefore you would want to get as much disk space as possible while not sacrificing on speed. This is what makes HDD your best option, it offers the best ratio between price and capacity, while still running at a reasonable speed. SSD is the second best option, but HDD beats it by a lot. By getting SSD, you are limiting the disk space you can get pr. dollar and a SSD has a relatively low disk capacity. (as of writing, SSD = ~2TB and HDD = ~8TB). After SSD you have all your performance options, like M.2 and RAM disk. The story is essentially the same as SSD, they are too expensive to mine with. (RAM disk even worse, but I won't go into depth with that.)
TL:DR: Get as much disk space as possible for your money, if you can find a SSD at the same price of a HDD, go for it.SSHD, is a no go. The SSHD's main advantage is its smart cache, but as @luxe said, the "Cache will not help on mining. A Plotfile contains 4096 scoops, only one scoop is read for mining per block. But it is always another scoop. So data in cache can not be used for next block.", they cost more and adds another point of failure, reducing its lifetime.
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@Gadrah_ @Colby3316 right now I am running two different machines for testing. first one with 500GB HHD, second one with 500GB SSD. I am making same amount of coins so far. in some cases I make more with the HHD.
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@botan Good to know, but you would have to let it run for weeks/months to really see which submits the best deadlines on average.
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A quite big problem building a own large scale storage solution is the power for internal drives ... because it makes no big difference if you buy a 500W or 1500W Power Supply ... the SATA power support seams almost the same. It is just about 1 or 4 GFX-Cards.
I just contacted https://backuppods.com after i took a closer look at:
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0848/1004/files/7400-0293_REV_B_OMS_ASSY_BACKUP_POD_6.0.pdf?5737656823305951323
And saw that they have a great solution to attach as much drives as possible to a PC-Power Supply using not only the sata but also the VGA slots of the Power Supply. Makes it possible to provide power for 30 drives (or maybe more).

I asked them if it would be possible to just buy this cables ... as i do not want to make them myself.
What would be possible due its a open source system, all plans and stuff are available.
https://f001.backblaze.com/file/Backblaze_Blog/Storage-Pod-6/Wiring+Diagrams.zip
source: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/open-source-data-storage-server/As soon as i get an answer, i will provider their current prices here.
EDIT: Always 2 x 4-PIN-MOLEX are used for a backplate with 5 drives, so maybe i can add a 3xSATA adapter to every of the 12 x 4-PIN-MOLEX ... that would be 36 Drives ...
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@luxe said in Large Scale Burst Mining Operation:
MOLEX ... that would be 36
Thanks a lot for this detailed answer. Do you think it would be better to buy all the parts individually to create a similar setup? or should I just get this solution?
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@luxe I just found the same power supplies used for this unit. I can see they are available on amazon, its the same model but two different prices. I don't see any difference. Can you tell if there are any differences?
I think I need to check if I can add a GPU to that motherboard.
also I found a very good HHD with a reasonable price.
Seagate Archive HDD 8TB SATA 6GBps 128MB Cache SATA Hard Drive (ST8000AS0002): price $236.88 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00XS423SC?m=A1BKCYQGK0QCS0&ref_=v_sp_widget_detail_page
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@botan I would learn/take from their setup what seams good. But improve the whole mainboard/cpu combination i guess ... DDR3 is also outdated. If you manage it to replace with e.g. http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/X99E_WSUSB_31/ you will have a awesome combination i guess.
Remember, their focus was on creating a storage solution, mining has some additional requirements.
Also no GPU is possible in that setup, all PCIe used for controllers. And GPU is highly recomned with so much drives/capacity.
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@botan The Seagate Archive 8TB drive is like made for Burst mining, SMR is perfect in this case. As you only write once. Also the other technical specifications fit with the needs of burst mining.
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Hmm i got reply from https://backuppods.com:
My Mail:
Hello,
I saw that i maybe possible to order only parts of
Storage Pod 6.0
I would like to use one EVGA 750w power supply only for harddrives.
Would it be possible to order just the following cables?
Cable Harness – PSU1
24-pin – Backblaze to Pigtail
Cable Pigtail
24-pin – EVGA NEX750G ConnectorTheir answer:
I can sell you drive guides, backplanes and SATA cards for parts.
So, they does not seam to be interested ...
Next i will try is to contact the manufactor of the cables directly :-)
http://www.nortra-cables.com/
But i fear they also have no interest in selling just one :-(
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There's a cable that can series connections of power supply from one HDD to another up to 5 I think. So, every SATA power from the PSU can be used for 5 HDDs. Now, I just have to remember where is that. But, it's there. I saw it in facebook someone selling in a group im in. But, it's a local seller. :)
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@jervis Guess that's not the same, i want to use your solution + using the VGA power supplies. My experience is, that attaching more than ~12 to 15 drives the 'normal' way does not work stable.
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I wish I could afford to do this.
I have heard of people running a good voltage regulator off of the 12V line, the problem is that the 5v line rarely has enough current for that many drives.
Would you be running linux?
Windows has a maximum 26 drive letter limit, virtual machines maybe?
Or RAID? that could be really fast and combine multiple drives to one letter.
a bunch of small cheap proxy miners?
I am a fan of blagos software with the proxyJust some food for thought! sounds like a fun project
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@Colby3316 OH! In addition, does mining with the GPU + HDD produce more Burst than mining with only the CPU + HDD?
I know it makes it faster, but I still don't understand the role of the CPU/GPU entirely outside of the inital plotting.
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@Colby3316 No it doesn't
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@Gadrah_ Can you or someone explain exactly what deadlines and scoops are? Someone really ought to make a small educational platform for people, lol.
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@Colby3316 I Suggest you read 'How it works' in OP of Bitcointalk thread. There is also a flow charts below that, to understand in more detail. Also here in the forum are FAQs answered.
@crutsy Excactly ... I currently use some quite old PC Power Supply with not much Watt but a big 5V part, nearly double as high as modern 'Gaming' PC Power-Supplies. It can provide 37A on 5V, while most modern/new only reach 15A-25A.

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@Colby3316 said in Large Scale Burst Mining Operation:
@Colby3316 OH! In addition, does mining with the GPU + HDD produce more Burst than mining with only the CPU + HDD?
I know it makes it faster, but I still don't understand the role of the CPU/GPU entirely outside of the inital plotting.
The overall speed of your response will effect how many Burst you Mine. Yes if you can scan all your plots in 30 Seconds you will be Fine. However..... the faster you submit you deadline on the short blocks the more your reward will be as some people who given time might have found a better deadlines will not have submitted them. :-)
Rich
Rich
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@luxe said in Large Scale Burst Mining Operation:
@botan The Seagate Archive 8TB drive is like made for Burst mining, SMR is perfect in this case. As you only write once. Also the other technical specifications fit with the needs of burst mining.
Yes SMR seems perfect! But sequential write speed on (Win/ntfs) is horrible! I`ve tried many different ways, in the enclosure with USB3, out of the Box on an SATA3 Port.... what it comes down to is that write speed always drops significantly after the first few GB of writing!
I'm currently trying to plot 4pcs 5TB Seagate Drives in parallel with gpuplotter and I`m going crazy!! Write speed is something like 150MB/s at start and then it drops to 6-8MB/s. It took 23h to do a 588GB Plotfile on each of these Drives in parallel!
I`ve been searchin all day if there is a better solution or filesystem to write large files to SMR. There are Linux filesystems which at least support the physical restrictions you have on SMR Drives. But if they are faster I don't know. If I feel adventurous enough I'll trie!
If somebody has another suggestion you are very welcome!
p.s. No, RAID 0 does not really help!-(
p.p.s. Yes, gpuplotter in direct mode
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@nixxda I plotted some 8TB on win/ntfs, you are right it is dropping but not that low for me, i always got more than 80MB as far as i can remember. Using 'buffer' mode of gpuPlotter not 'direct'! (Not sure how direct is implemented, but for my understanding it has to create/move/delete data on creating plot ... so thats the weakness of SMR, best for write once and after that only read ... from what i heard.)
If you need 'direct' maybe plot to another fast drive (maybe ssd) and copy it after plotting ... but, if you want to do it that way, you can also plot in 'buffer' mode and not copy, but copy via optimizer. And you get the same optimized plot like in direct mode.





