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    6100 / 8200 SSD Wearouts

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Official Netgate® Hardware
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    • E Offline
      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 Offline
        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 Offline
          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

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          • stephenw10S Online
            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
            last edited by

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

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            • S Offline
              SteveITS Rebel Alliance @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

              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 reboot, or more depending on packages, and device or disk speed.
              Upvote 👍 helpful posts!

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              • stephenw10S Online
                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 Offline
                  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 Offline
                    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 Offline
                      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

                      M 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • M Online
                        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 Offline
                          SteveITS Rebel Alliance @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?

                          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 reboot, or more depending on packages, and device or disk speed.
                          Upvote 👍 helpful posts!

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                          • M Online
                            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 Offline
                              SteveITS Rebel Alliance @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.

                              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 reboot, or more depending on packages, and device or disk speed.
                              Upvote 👍 helpful posts!

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