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    6100 / 8200 SSD Wearouts

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Official Netgate® Hardware
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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!

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          • 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

                  M 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • 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.

                    S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • 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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