Large Scale Burst Mining Operation
-
@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.
-
@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.
-
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 ...
-
@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?
-
@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
-
@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.
-
@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.
-
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 :-(
-
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. :)
-
@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.
-
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
-
@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.
-
@Colby3316 No it doesn't
-
@Gadrah_ Can you or someone explain exactly what deadlines and scoops are? Someone really ought to make a small educational platform for people, lol.
-
@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.

-
@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
-
@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
-
@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.
-
@nixxda You have a driver error for your USB3.0 I have seen this before. Also make sure you use GPT for the partition type too over 2TB. The transfer speed can dip down normally too for larger files. If you are using Direct mode this may be part of the problem. You can use Buffer mode and write from memory and it may help speed up the process.
Some chipsets on mainboards have a firmware problem and it may take a BIOS update to get it sorted out. If you are familiar with this process it might be a simple solution.
Oh wait SMR may be a different beast. Use the above if it helps any. You could also just take it out of the enclosure to write to it on a SATA cable, then reinsert it into the enclosure to read from it.
-
thanks for the answers! And I did all of them!
Yes direct mode seems to be an bad Idea. Buffer and writing in parallel works perfect. I'm currently doing two Drives in parallel with 12GB RAM on each and I get about 150MB/s write speed for each "chunk" on both. Which is very nice!
But optimizing is going to be a B....! Cant remember what the optimizer does. Is it also writing the "layout" first and then filling it? (or whatever it does!-)@CryptoNick USB3 controller on my rig seems to work fine. But I got these drives very cheap! like half...! so first I thought that they probably put the worst USB3 controller ever in these boxes! But i have not confirmed that with all the new "enlightenments" I had lately.
Right now I have three of them connected to SATA and I get 150 to 165ish MB/s write speed and one I have in an USB3 Dock. From these one I get up to 189MB/s! when the first two Drives are done I'll try to confirm my "crappy Seagate USB3 controller in a Box" theory!btw. copying from one these Drives to another is not affected by this slowdown!






