What’s up guys? I’m not really sure that this warranted a new thread, but I wasn’t really sure where to ask this that would get visibility. So, my plotting setup is a dual e5 2690 v2 server. Do any of you have a setup like this running Bladebit? If so, what kind of times are you seeing? I’m STILL thinking about getting all of the RAM that I and my Chia partner just bought 20 more of the BB 14 TB HDDs and I’ve got a lot to plot. Also, we’re planning to grow beyond this. I’m already outputting something like 72 plots per day running dual madmax instances with their own ramdisk and nvme. Please let me know what times you are seeing on Bladebit running on 2x e5 2690 v2.
Can you provide me with a hardware list of what you have? Also are the 14tb drives that much cheaper than the 18TB drives, and are you plotting under Linux or Windows?
Yeah. I don’t mind. I have a 2U Supermicro with an X9DRi-ln4f+ mobo, 2x e5 2690 v2, 256 GB pc3-10600R running at 1866, 1 Dell h310, 2x Dell h200e, 1x supermicro dual nvme card, 2x nvme, 1 1tb Ed sn750 and 1x 970 evo plus 2tb, 2x Dynatron R5 coolers. I think that’s about it for this server. Why do you ask?
Guy I have breakfast with on Sundays looking for some kind of setup.
You should get pretty good times out of that. I have dual e5 2697 v3 (14 cores each) and it can make a plot in about 15 min although it takes another 5-10 to copy to disk from RAM depending on your target drive. I actually have 4 of these running plus a few others lower-powered systems and I’m hitting about 300 plots a day.
If you can configure your server with 448gb of RAM instead of 512gb it will save you a little money. BladeBit needs like ~425gb IIRC.
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How much storage do you have at the moment?
Over 1pb - just need to finish plotting it! Here’s more info: The Journey to One Petabyte - Chia Farming & Harvesting - Chia Forum
I’ve got around 610 TiB when everything is done plotting. In the middle of plotting 20 14tb drives. Working towards a Petabyte.
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I figured this would be my bottle neck. I do have 3TB of nvme that I can use as buffer though. Should buy me some time. So, my output would probably be pretty similar to what I’m getting now with the dual process madmax huh?
I’ve learned that your final target disk is always going to be the limiting factor in an automated plotter production workflow. You can only write plots as fast as your slowest component, which will always be that final spinning disk. Spending money to make other parts of the process faster is wasted if you still can’t write plots to the final disk any faster - your other processes will always be waiting on something. Once you reach that bottleneck, you’ve got to scale out with more plotters, not faster plotters, as you’ve learned. So yes - I’d say spend the money on another similar setup to create more plots in parallel like you are already doing with Madmax.
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What type of USB hubs are you using with this or they are internal drives?
I would like to have qty 8 of these…
Irvine, CA, March 19, 2018 – Nimbus Data, a pioneer in flash memory solutions, today announced the ExaDrive® DC100, the largest capacity (100 terabytes) solid state drive (SSD) ever produced.
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I don’t believe ended uses any usb. I don’t either. I’m all SAS. Pictures of my biggest harvester below.
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Nice setup of your disk etc
Yeah. I wish it wasn’t so messy! Lots of wires everywhere! My main goal was noise! Trying to keep it quiet! Gotta live with this thing! Lol. JBOD would be pretty loud. I probably should’ve just bought an expander like you are looking at. Might have made things easier.
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That’s for sure - mine is nice and clean but it sounds like a jet taking off! The JBODs daisy chain to each other on the back side so it is just one SAS cable coming out of server and going into first enclosure. Luckily it lives in the garage so I don’t hear it.
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Really nice setup 
Guess you could grow some tomatos in the garage too.
Vegetables 
I mean, not the cryptocoins!
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At night we leave the door between house and garage open and let it heat our house. 
I don’t have a plan for summer yet but it will either involve moving or air-conditioning the garage. 
What size disks do you mostly have in there??
- 12 18tb
- 48 16tb
- 36 14tb (thank you Best Buy)
- 84 4tb
Close to 2pb overall. I’m replacing the 4tb drives as I find good deals on bigger capacities. I actually have another 100 or so 4tb drives. Currently deciding whether to sell them on ebay or go ahead and find enclosures for them. I need to fill up the rest of my bigger drives before that becomes an issue. I’m at about 7400 plots right now.