Adventures in Chia

  I currently have 4350 plots taking 430.5TiB spread between 8 harvesters. Current storage consists of: Main storage is a PC with 10 x 20TB drives running ZFS in raidz2 (1460 plots). Secondary storage is a PC with 7 x 8TB drives running ZFS in raidz1 (397 plots). Pi4 (4GB) plus 2 x 16TB USB drives running btrfs in single mode (280 plots). Pi4 (4GB) plus 2 x 16TB USB drives running btrfs in single mode (275 plots). Pi5 (8GB) plus TR004 with 4 x 16TB drives running bftrs in raid0 mode (560 plots). Pi5 (8GB) plus TR004 with 4 x 16TB drives running btrfs in raid0 mode (560 plots). Pi5 (8GB) plus TR004 with 4 x 16TB drives running btrfs in raid0 mode (560 plots). Pi5 (8GB) plus TR004 with 4 x 16TB drives running btrfs in raid0 mode (268 plots, filling up).  Full node is an Intel I5-11000 PC with a U.2 enterprise SSD for work space (currently on its 3rd) plus a couple of M.2 SSD (boot drive, spooling drive). It has 128GB of RAM and a 10GbE NIC. Even the enterprise SSD's wear out. A...

I currently have 2597 plots spread between 4 harvesters. Due to heat I have had the Chia farm off for multiple days which doesn't help with winning blocks or for filling up the 2nd TR-004. Current storage consists of: Main storage is a 10 x 20TB machine running ZFS file system, raidz2 (1460 plots) Secondary storage is 7 x 8TB machine running ZFS file system, raidz1 (397 plots) Pi5 (8GB) + TR004 with 4 x 16TB drives running bftrs file system, raid0 (560 plots) Pi5 (8GB) + TR004 with 4 x 16TB drives running btrfs file system, raid0 (slowly filling - 190 plots) I have a I5-11000 machine as the full node.   The good news is the  Pi5 + TR004 seems quite scalable, that is its fairly easy to add another one and once filled can switch it over to being a harvester. I'm seeing average latency on the Pi5 harvester of 400ms and max of 1.5 seconds, so it seems able to handle the random reads. While one could use a rack mount system with tons of drives I don't think the returns are enoug...

I finally filled up the primary storage server with 1450 plots. My next task is to replace the couple of Pi4's that have a pair of external hard disks with the Qnap TR-004 (4 bay) storage units. To that end I have ordered a couple of Pi5 (8GB). I will start by swapping one at a time so that I have as many plots online at a time. Each of the Pi4's have around 275 plots so I should be able to double that. My concern is the TR-004 connected to a Pi5 will be slow as the Pi only has USB 3.0 (5 Gbit) ports even though the TR-004 supports USB 3.2 gen 2 (10 Gbit) connections. I guess I will find out. If it works out one could scale the solution to have multiple Pi5/TR-004 running as a harvester only requiring two power points and 1 network connection each. Update January 2025 First Pi5/TR-004 filled up with plots and the second on its way. I got 560 plots on it with 4 x 16TB drives (95.3% used). I leave some space free. The slower USB 3 port doesn't seem to effect things much. I am...

As mentioned in my previous post I replaced all the drives in my primary storage server with larger ones. I am still trying to fill it up. Unfortunately the Bladebit plotter seems to lock up regularly and when I notice I have to shut down Chia, delete the temporary files off the SSD and the half-done plot that it was working on when it locked up. Top shows a zombie task and the plotter seems to have lost track of it. The 2nd WD 16TB drive that I returned under warranty has been rejected. They claimed it has a dent on the back of the drive, so likely shipping damage when I got it. I had 12 of these drives, now 11, so no point wasting any more money on the WD drives. I currently have two Qnap TR-004 units that hold 4 drives each, so 8 drives are enough. I need to fill the primary storage server before working on the TR-004's.

I bought 10 x 22TB Seagate HDD. Last week I bit the bullet and removed all the 16TB HDD from the primary storage server and put the 22TB drives in. I am now plotting away trying to fill it up. The Bladebit CPU plotter seems to lock up my full-node so I have to check on it once a day. The used 16TB drives are destined to go into a couple of QNAP TR004 units running in JBOD mode plugged into a Raspberry Pi5 running as a harvester. The TR004 can hold 4 drives. If this setup works out I will look at replacing the two Pi4 + external HDD's with Pi5 + TR004 units. I might have 3 of these as it seems a fairly inexpensive way of adding another harvester with 64TB of disk space. Speaking of the 16TB drives, I returned a 2nd WD 16TB HDD and picked up a replacement under warranty for the previous drive that I returned. It had been sitting at the computer shop for almost 3 months before I drove there to pickup the replacement. Thats 2 out of 14 WD drives that have failed so far. The lack of rel...

The TR-004 units arrived. The plan is to put four of the 16TB WD drives into each of the TR-004's. I am experimenting with running the TR-004's off a Pi5, but that may turn out to be too slow. I have a problem in that I have 10 x WD 16TB drives in my primary storage server and I had 4 spares. Two of those spares are now in one of TR-004's. One is off getting replaced under warranty and another spare seems to have died as well. I don't want to pull the drives from the primary storage server until I can generate more plots. Its currently too hot for that at the moment and you need to use an Nvidia GPU if you want compressed plots. I got 10 x Seagate 20TB drives to put into the primary storage server which will increase its capacity and free up those WD 16TB drives but the weather is holding me back.