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    6100 / 8200 SSD Wearouts

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Official Netgate® Hardware
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    • keyserK
      keyser Rebel Alliance @stephenw10
      last edited by keyser

      @stephenw10 yeah, Very much so, but it’s maybe a year and a half or perhaps two years ago, so it might just have been a bug at the time.
      I haven’t tried to receeate it since

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

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      • E
        Eria211 @keyser
        last edited by

        @keyser Our Zabbix setup doesn't use DNS names for the clients it's monitoring, it would have been a good idea but we just let the agent know the IP of the Zabbix server and autoregister - so I wouldn't expect Zabbix to the the cause of this but I appreciate the suggestion

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        • E
          Eria211 @stephenw10
          last edited by

          @stephenw10 is there a particular setting you are interested in?

          The smallest Message Cache Size I think is 4MB and there's no option for zero

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          • E
            Eria211 @SteveITS
            last edited by

            @SteveITS Do you use pfblockerNG? I would like to use a RAM disk but I'd also like pfblockerNG to survive the reboot, crash, or a power failure without needing to reinstall or force a reload each time

            This is all a bit demoralising as I don't believe (at this time) that I've got a crazy config that is inflicting this high wear as a consequence

            S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • stephenw10S
              stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
              last edited by

              I assume you are using DNS-BL? That requires Unbound.

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              • S
                SteveITS Galactic Empire @Eria211
                last edited by

                @Eria211 We use pfBlocker and Suricata, and RAM disks, on all but a couple installs. We don’t use DNSBL though fwiw.

                https://forum.netgate.com/topic/180319/pfblockerng-with-ram-disk/2

                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!

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • stephenw10S
                  stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                  last edited by

                  I use DNS-BL with ram disks but only with a limited list. Just basic ad-blocking.

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                  • A
                    azdeltawye @Eria211
                    last edited by azdeltawye

                    @Eria211
                    This thread got me curious to check my system. I have a 4100-MAX that has been in service for about 10 months. I ran a SMART test and was alarmed to see that I have already written over 6 TB and used up 7% of the drive life!

                    How do I use the top command to find out what is driving all this use?

                    
                    === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
                    SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
                    
                    SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
                    Critical Warning:                   0x00
                    Temperature:                        37 Celsius
                    Available Spare:                    100%
                    Available Spare Threshold:          1%
                    Percentage Used:                    7%
                    Data Units Read:                    22,625 [11.5 GB]
                    Data Units Written:                 12,966,318 [6.63 TB]
                    Host Read Commands:                 317,838
                    Host Write Commands:                893,042,733
                    Controller Busy Time:               3,974
                    Power Cycles:                       38
                    Power On Hours:                     6,553
                    Unsafe Shutdowns:                   24
                    Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
                    Error Information Log Entries:      0
                    Warning  Comp. Temperature Time:    0
                    Critical Comp. Temperature Time:    0
                    Temperature Sensor 1:               56 Celsius
                    Temperature Sensor 2:               37 Celsius
                    Temperature Sensor 3:               38 Celsius
                    Temperature Sensor 4:               37 Celsius
                    Thermal Temp. 1 Transition Count:   1
                    Thermal Temp. 1 Total Time:         23597
                    
                    Error Information (NVMe Log 0x01, 16 of 64 entries)
                    No Errors Logged
                    
                    Self-tests not supported
                    
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                    • A
                      azdeltawye @azdeltawye
                      last edited by azdeltawye

                      So experimenting with the top command I tried this:

                      top -m io -u unbound
                      last pid: 21501; load averages: 0.50, 0.41, 0.33 up 55+18:54:38 13:10:18
                      86 processes: 3 running, 83 sleeping
                      CPU: 8.7% user, 2.8% nice, 12.0% system, 0.0% interrupt, 76.4% idle
                      Mem: 447M Active, 490M Inact, 642M Wired, 56K Buf, 2222M Free
                      ARC: 262M Total, 79M MFU, 165M MRU, 6291K Anon, 1563K Header, 10M Other
                      209M Compressed, 567M Uncompressed, 2.72:1 Ratio
                      Swap: 6144M Total, 6144M Free

                      Does this confirm that the unbound process is the cause of the excessive drive activity?

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                      • E
                        Eria211 @azdeltawye
                        last edited by Eria211

                        @azdeltawye I ran top -aSH -m io -o total and took a screenshot

                        I think if many more people posted their smart data here, we would probably discover that the wearout is a real problem experienced by many people.

                        I wish the included drive had been ~256GB, as at least that would have given a greater capacity to wear out over time and significantly reduced the wear levels we are experiencing. If I had known this would be an issue I would have replaced each SSD before deployment.

                        If you google generally in this area, quite a few people seem to have had SSD issues and there appear to have been many identified reasons. Still, most of the posts I've sampled just go quiet without a conclusion being identified (might just be my sample however).

                        A post on this forum from 2018 is identical to my issue, which is sad:

                        https://forum.netgate.com/post/998181

                        A highlighted pair of posts that chime strongly with my experience:

                        https://forum.netgate.com/topic/165993/should-i-be-using-unbound-python-mode-is-it-stable/6?_=1706907654864

                        https://forum.netgate.com/topic/165993/should-i-be-using-unbound-python-mode-is-it-stable/8?_=1706907654866

                        I'm currently reading through it to see if there's anything I can do to stop my wearout situation from getting worse

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                        • M
                          mcury Rebel Alliance @Eria211
                          last edited by

                          [23.09.1-RELEASE][root@pfsense.home.arpa]/root: iostat -x
                                                  extended device statistics  
                          device       r/s     w/s     kr/s     kw/s  ms/r  ms/w  ms/o  ms/t qlen  %b  
                          nda0           0       5      1.1     32.7     0     0     0     0    0   0 
                          pass0          0       0      0.0      0.0     0     0     0     0    0   0 
                          

                          What I found in my SG-4100 is really weird.
                          A few days ago, I enabled DNSBL to check something in another post, a few days after I disabled it.
                          I thought that my IO would go down after that but guess what, it didn't.

                          So, I decided to perform a clean install and restored my configuration file and boom, IO is down again.
                          In this new installation, DNSBL has never been enabled.

                          I suppose there is something wrong with DNSBL right now.. not sure yet, perhaps it was something with previous setup..

                          dead on arrival, nowhere to be found.

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                          • S
                            SteveITS Galactic Empire @mcury
                            last edited by

                            @mcury you didn’t specify so I’ll ask…did you restart at that point or just go ahead and reinstall?

                            @Eria211 try the RAM disk it should help immensely. Do you have the UT1 or another giant list like that configured?

                            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!

                            M 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • M
                              mcury Rebel Alliance @SteveITS
                              last edited by

                              @SteveITS said in 6100 / 8200 SSD Wearouts:

                              you didn’t specify so I’ll ask…did you restart at that point or just go ahead and reinstall?

                              you mean, a restart after disabling DNSBL ? Not that I remember.
                              What I'm sure about is that when I checked iostat output, the device was UP for days..

                              dead on arrival, nowhere to be found.

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                              • S
                                SteveITS Galactic Empire @mcury
                                last edited by

                                @mcury Yes, just wondering out loud if a restart would have cleared that condition. If not, that would imply something was changed/bad that wasn’t in the configuration, yet is persistent.

                                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!

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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