Hello!
Any advice on installing the OS onto the USB stick? Things I should do or not do?
I installed some distros using USB sticks. Speed was way out of usability. A server is supposed to run on the fastest media available.
[...] My two cents using USB keys... but the fast ones.
Sandisk Ultra's or Extreme for example. [...]
While nobody can state that "beyond any reasonable doubt", this is my approach to this:
Use Gnome Disks to measure the speed of the drive.Step 1After the test completion, a diagram will be shown.
Make a
screen capture of the diagram. Save it under a meaningful name.
Test all partitions of the drive, make a
screen capture for each.Step 2Plug and test the USB candidate for server deployment. Make a screen capture for this, too.
Repeat the steps for each available USB stick.
Step 3Use an image viewer to
compare the test results for each drive.Here is a sample of a SSD ADATA SU650, 240 GB (223 GB), main partition, /dev/sda3/:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3049320371782520While getting this kind of results on a stick is unlikely, you can obviously test a classic HDD and after comparing the results, you can make the best decision regarding which stick fits the closest to the server's speed requirements.
Since you have 6 TB HDDs, a good idea is to test those and compare with the stick's speed.
The closer you get to the HDDs speed, the better.
I recommend you to avoid any stick that is under 40 MB/s (2400 MB/min). The higher, the better.
You need to bare in mind that
heat is critical, and it slows down any NAND media, be it stick or SSD. The
Joule effect has nothing to do with my opinions regarding a manufacturer or another. It's just a physics law. It simply acts with or without my consent or anyone else's.
Therefore, given the fact that the server is going to work many hours, the drive wil get hot at some point in time. This leads to bad sectors and in fact, it's what kills any storage of any kind, including optical media.
Good luck!