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    SSD read/write - how long will it last

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • A
      AdriftAtlas
      last edited by

      It has 4GB of RAM and it's only using 33%.

      I stopped the syslogd service temporarily and something was still writing to disk excessively so it's not the culprit.

      This command shows zfskern writing a lot but what and why is it writing?

      top -m io -o write -IS -d 1
      
      last pid: 97225;  load averages:  0.17,  0.17,  0.14                                                                                      up 2+20:53:44  20:25:57
      80 processes:  2 running, 76 sleeping, 2 waiting
      CPU:  0.3% user,  0.1% nice,  1.2% system,  0.2% interrupt, 98.2% idle
      Mem: 89M Active, 191M Inact, 1383M Wired, 2166M Free
      ARC: 842M Total, 678M MFU, 91M MRU, 2298K Anon, 9317K Header, 59M Other
           699M Compressed, 1473M Uncompressed, 2.11:1 Ratio
      Swap: 1024M Total, 1024M Free
      
        PID USERNAME     VCSW  IVCSW   READ  WRITE  FAULT  TOTAL PERCENT COMMAND
          6 root      2207881  26057    313 1142462      0 1142775  82.97% zfskern
      54361 root       35902   7684    313 151637     80 152030  11.04% php-fpm
        359 root       34589   8604    111  76066     28  76205   5.53% php-fpm
      14040 dhcpd     969664  20228     12   2585     20   2617   0.19% dhcpd
      84008 root        3607    224      0   2060      0   2060   0.15% syslogd
        358 root       36037   7802     54    400     35    489   0.04% php-fpm
      82882 root        2927    152      0    353      0    353   0.03% php_pfb
      18850 _dhcp       5303    182      0    287      0    287   0.02% dhclient
      80651 root         235     53      0    216      0    216   0.02% vnstatd
       3607 root      258782   7119      0     25      0     25   0.00% ntpd
      98600 unbound   857611 289739      1      7      8     16   0.00% unbound
       4737 root       14994   5587     71      4      2     77   0.01% nginx
      38639 root           9      4      7      2      5     14   0.00% login
       5065 root        4456   2591      4      2      1      7   0.00% nginx
      80827 root          18      3      0      2      0      2   0.00% sh
       4892 root        5399   2003      0      2      0      2   0.00% nginx
      63231 root          18      3      0      2      0      2   0.00% sh
      22895 root      282285  17201      0      0      2      2   0.00% filterlog
          1 root         272      7     85      0     15    100   0.01% init
        357 root      243687   8432      1      0      0      1   0.00% php-fpm
      67497 root        3140    244      5      0      8     13   0.00% tcsh
        397 root         626    182      1      0      4      5   0.00% check_reload_status
          0 root      92073647  98734     42      0      0     42   0.00% kernel
      41040 root          10     26      5      0      4      9   0.00% sh
      62768 root        9323    597      2      0      9     11   0.00% sshd
      83376 root           6      1      4      0      5      9   0.00% iperf3
      38864 root           4      2      1      0      0      1   0.00% getty
       2194 root       13892   1543      1      0      0      1   0.00% cron
      42041 root          14      1      1      0      0      1   0.00% sh
      66300 root        9007    859      0      0      2      2   0.00% qemu-ga
      12509 root          10      1      1      0      0      1   0.00% sshd
      
      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • keyserK
        keyser Rebel Alliance @michmoor
        last edited by

        @michmoor If you look closelt in that report, it says %used = 3%
        So there is lots and lots of life left in your SSD :-)

        Love the no fuss of using the official appliances :-)

        M 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • M
          michmoor LAYER 8 Rebel Alliance @keyser
          last edited by

          @keyser you sure percentage used isn’t taking about disk space?

          Firewall: NetGate,Palo Alto-VM,Juniper SRX
          Routing: Juniper, Arista, Cisco
          Switching: Juniper, Arista, Cisco
          Wireless: Unifi, Aruba IAP
          JNCIP,CCNP Enterprise

          keyserK 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • keyserK
            keyser Rebel Alliance @michmoor
            last edited by

            @michmoor said in SSD read/write - how long will it last:

            @keyser you sure percentage used isn’t taking about disk space?

            Well, pretty much 100%. The SSD itself cannot know how much diskspace the OS considers allocated and used - especially not if the OS does not support TRIM. Also, the S.M.A.R.T. Health tools always reports on the actual physical state of the SSD, not the filesystem state on the SSD.

            Love the no fuss of using the official appliances :-)

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • S
              SteveITS Galactic Empire
              last edited by

              @adriftatlas said in SSD read/write - how long will it last:

                PID USERNAME     VCSW  IVCSW   READ  WRITE  FAULT  TOTAL PERCENT COMMAND
                  6 root      2207881  26057    313 1142462      0 1142775  82.97% zfskern
              

              WRITE is a counter, I believe? So it should increment forever. I pulled up a router on 2.6 with ZFS and see 5315859 (incrementing slowly) but that's 284 days of uptime. zfskern should include the ZFS scrub.

              What does iostat -x show? On that same router, which is also using a RAM disk, I see:

              : iostat -x
                                      extended device statistics
              device       r/s     w/s     kr/s     kw/s  ms/r  ms/w  ms/o  ms/t qlen  %b
              ada0           0       0      0.0      1.2     6     0    24     3    0   0
              cd0            0       0      0.0      0.0     0     0     1     1    0   0
              pass0          0       0      0.0      0.0     4     1    79    22    0   0
              pass1          0       0      0.0      0.0     0     0     0     0    0   0
              

              Pre-2.7.2/23.09: Only install packages for your version, or risk breaking it. Select your branch in System/Update/Update Settings.
              When upgrading, allow 10-15 minutes to restart, or more depending on packages and device speed.
              Upvote 👍 helpful posts!

              A 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Dobby_D
                Dobby_
                last edited by

                I would go with a small RaspBerry PI 3/4 with 2/4 GB and a
                big mSATA or M.2 SSD with TRIM support as a logging server.

                #~. @Dobby

                Turris Omnia - 4 Ports - 2 GB RAM / TurrisOS 7 Release (Btrfs)
                PC Engines APU4D4 - 4 Ports - 4 GB RAM / pfSense CE 2.7.2 Release (ZFS)
                PC Engines APU6B4 - 4 Ports - 4 GB RAM / pfSense+ (Plus) 24.03_1 Release (ZFS)

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • A
                  AdriftAtlas @SteveITS
                  last edited by

                                          extended device statistics  
                  device       r/s     w/s     kr/s     kw/s  ms/r  ms/w  ms/o  ms/t qlen  %b  
                  da0            0      11      2.1    149.9     0     0     5     1    0   0 
                  pass0          0       0      0.0      0.0     0     0     0     0    0   0 
                  

                  I'd like to understand what is writing though. I'd rather not resort to using a RAM disk as it can cause other issues. There is no reason anything should be writing that much on a mostly idle router.

                  keyserK S 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • keyserK
                    keyser Rebel Alliance @AdriftAtlas
                    last edited by

                    @adriftatlas The usual HUGE suspects are pfSense add-on packages (in order of typical write activity:)

                    1: Suricata
                    2: Snort
                    3: pfBlockerNG (especially with reply logging turned on)
                    4: NtopNG

                    All of them has measures to manually configure how much (or little) logging they actually do.

                    Love the no fuss of using the official appliances :-)

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • S
                      SteveITS Galactic Empire @AdriftAtlas
                      last edited by

                      @adriftatlas Hmm yeah that’s 149x more. Not that I have a comparison handy.

                      Re:suspects, also any package mentioning SSD here:
                      https://www.netgate.com/supported-pfsense-plus-packages

                      Pre-2.7.2/23.09: Only install packages for your version, or risk breaking it. Select your branch in System/Update/Update Settings.
                      When upgrading, allow 10-15 minutes to restart, or more depending on packages and device speed.
                      Upvote 👍 helpful posts!

                      A 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • A
                        AdriftAtlas @SteveITS
                        last edited by

                        The only thing I have installed that could be chatty is pfBlockerNG. Even then I only use the Geo IP blocking aliases.

                        M 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • M
                          mcury @AdriftAtlas
                          last edited by mcury

                          I get 49 kw/s, and I'm using pfblockerNG (not logging DNS replies) and remote syslog (with logging to the firewall disabled).
                          Based on the other thread, the count would be: 49 x 60 x 60 x 24 x 365 = 1545264000
                          Which is 1.5 TB per year.
                          My SSD, ADATA M.2 SATA SU650 120GB can write 70TBW, so based on that, I would be able to use it for around 45 years.

                          dead on arrival, nowhere to be found.

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