[Introducing] The Bitcoin Mining Authority

[xenon481]

My field experience using USB flash for read-once-per-boot storage is miserable.  Six months after deploying such a solution, random failures started appearing.

I would not recommend using low-quality USB flash drives for anything in production....  especially read-once-per-boot solutions, where you only discover a dead USB stick when you most need it to work.

Been there, done that.

I've used a few hundreds of appliance type rigs using read-once-per-boot USB Flash and only ever had 5 or 6 of the USB Flash devices fail over several years of operation. I've had a much higher percentage of HDD failure in the same time period.

Variance is a bitch.

Network booting is far more reliable.

Agreed, but it isn't as simple for initial setup.

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[xenon481]

The thing is... it MUST be done right. Proper fs, proper partitioning, not writing logs (or much anything) at all on the USB. I.e. something along the lines of a decent USB stick, not necessarily expensive but the right one, ext4 with journalling turned off, noatime flags etc..., partitions aligned with "erase blocks", the list of dirty  tricks goes on... Now once it is all done and on a system which is one of quite a few and which is expected to run 24/7/365 the chances are that this USB stick will last long enough.

It's much easier than going through all of that stuff and then finding that you forgot about one thing or another.

Just set it up to boot into a RAM Drive. Then nothing ever writes to the device (except for settings modifications which should only happen once in a blue moon).

[xf2_org]

Just set it up to boot into a RAM Drive. Then nothing ever writes to the device (except for settings modifications which should only happen once in a blue moon).

Yep.  That's what I do with network boots.  Any modifications occur upstream, when I regenerate the network image; no need to write, ever [except to local ramfs].

Some kind of netboot is a fine solution, but then one would need to maintain TFTP server and other stuff as well as some kind of shared fs. Again it's a single point of failure, possibly needs to be duplicated, Nothing impossible, but it all has it's own set of things to take care of.

That is so 1990s

A better firmware means you can HTTP after DHCP, so my network boots occur from redundant HTTP servers into RAM.  No shared filesystem, no single point of failure besides the network and power cables.  Those management firmwares and processors in modern server systems are pretty darned fancy these days.

Even with an older firmware, all you would need is DHCP/PXE/TFTP to download a kernel, and an initramfs packed with everything a miner needs.  Or the initramfs could be the first stage of userspace download into RAM.

As an aside, though you must still boot a gPXE image, rather than straight HTTP like I've set up locally, here is a fun project:  http://boot.kernel.org/   Booting an OS over HTTP.

[nster]

For the person who is talking about USB sticks... failure rate and corruption rate of USB sticks in this use is very high compared to an HDD or SSD, which will result in headaches and downtime. They would have to buy a new stick and somehow download the bootable image, not to mention they would have to know how to make the USB bootable, or they would have to wait for a replacement from the OP. Both of which are HORRIBLE solutions with long down times, and lots of hassle for both the consumer and the seller. Versatility is an important part of ANY PC. Note that the target are NEWBIES also. Being able to use their mining rig as a media center as well would make the PC worth MUCH more to them, even if they don't use it, it is an option at least. If bitcoin mining is not profitable at all anymore, the PC would be worth a lot less to them if not media option or other is available to them. No USB solution is HORRIBLE and should not be implemented, ESPECIALLY not in this case

You really think that USB sticks are going to fail when you only read from them once per boot and never ever write to them? USB stick failures are primarily due to low quality NAND not holding up to significant amounts of writes. In a USB boot model, you'd NEVER write to the stick (except for one time setup) and only read once per boot because everything would be done within a RAM drive. This is a very typical model for cheap appliances which is what mining rigs are supposed to be.

And if you still think failure rates are a significant problem, then just ship two of them. That will still be ~10x or more cheaper than an SSD or even HDD.

I understand you point, but look. Each USB is what, 5$ for a cheapo one and 10$ for a decent one. If you take 2 cheapo ones, it is 10$, which is 1/4 of  the cost of the 500GB HDD, and 2 decent ones = half the cost.

So the savings are already not very big, 20 or 30$, which is at best 1.167% of the cost of the rig and at worst 0.74%. Also, the downtime that a USB stick failure would cause is obviously big. Also note that for now, the OP is more set on windows 7 then linux. And as I and vladimir said, this is not for the audience the OP is trying to reach, so this discussion is moot

[allinvain]

Then he's just better off finding the cheapest (but still well researched for reliability issues) 150 to 500 gb hd. If he can get lower than that just enough to fit in Win 7 it's all good. Problem solved. If HD fails, swap in a new one, re-image the drive, badda booom badda bing, you're done.

[proudhon]

Honestly, if Windows is a must, then I'd just get something like this.

[allinvain]

Honestly, if Windows is a must, then I'd just get something like this.

Nice! Or maybe one that spins at 5400 rpm? One of those green drives. Lower power consumption, but then again a HD doesn't eat up that much anyways.