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    6100 / 8200 SSD Wearouts

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Official Netgate® Hardware
    21 Posts 6 Posters 2.4k Views
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    • stephenw10S
      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
      last edited by

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

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • 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
            
            A 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • 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?

              E 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • 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.

                      S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • 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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