ytulpan

Thank you Christopher, It could be that the rack power supply is failing. Anyway, thanks for the diagnostic. Yossi

Will do. Thanks.

I am uploading everything under the "Service" folder. But still, if there was a problem with the VDS, shouldn't I see something in the event log ? And also, how do I force DP to see the drive short of rebooting ? Can I reset the driver ? I should remind you that I cannot restart the service - it hangs on stopping.

Thanks Drashna, I have no new dropouts since I massaged the drives and replaced the controller driver. The controller is a JMB362 on a Gigabyte GA-P55-UD6 MB. It's connected to a SiI3726 port multiplier. The 2 issues concerning me are : 1. There was no indication anywhere of a problem (eventlog, HD sentinel). Also the drive was accessible with no problems by the file system. 2. I could not make DP to see the drive again without rebooting (tried ofline/online, enable/disable in device manager)

Thanks, I don't have the scanner installed. I had some trouble with installing it and I left it as such... I think your advice refers to it. Anyway I have given the VIP treatment to my disks, set all of them to max performance and updated the controller driver, let's hope the voodoo will help. The strange thing is that I do have a competent disk monitor suite and it didn't complain, and also the event log doesn't show anything.

I have a drive that keeps dropping out of the pool every few days. When I see the alert, I look into Event Manager and there is no event whatsoever, HD sentinel shows nothing, the disk shows OK in the device tree and in disk manager. I can access the drive via the OS (Win 2008R2) with no issues. Thing is, the only way that works for me to reset the situation is a reboot. Not very convenient. The drive is a green 2TB Seagate ST2000DL003. It is connected via a port multiplier to an JMB SATA port on the MB. I have 14 other identical drives and 5 WD 4TB red drives, similarly connected with no issues. Help !

Thank you Alex, This was a very clear explanation. Complex product. Just looks simple from the outside.

Is there a simple method to know where DP keeps a specific file ? Say an application opens a file for write while that file is being moved by a rebalancer. What will happen ? Similarly, say a file is kept continuously open (i.e. a database file). Will it be rebalanced ? How ? What about duplication ?

Hi Drasna, I'm happy that it was found worthwhile. Thanks, Yossi

OK, Thanks again, Yossi

Hello Drashna, Thank you for your speedy and complete answers. Well, regarding the service hang, today I tried to shut it down and it was in "stopping" state for 45 minutes at which time I rebooted. While waiting, I have taken a dump of the process and uploaded to you. In the comments I mentioned "User:ytulpan" I really hope that rebooting the server with a pending service stop doesn't corrupt data... Regarding the original issue. I have turned on the "immediately balance flag", so, yes, DP starts balancing, but nevertheless fills the pool in a wrong way in my view. The following screen dump shows a drive that has vastly exceeded its percentage quota and is still written to. This looks to me a quite serious problem, since in the case a pool contains drives with a significant disparity in size, a small disk will not be used until a large disk is close to be filled. The percentage option is crucial in many uses, and I wished it worked. Again, Kudos for a great product !

OK, some news. Regarding the "hang", well, I can stare down the process into submission . While preparing the trace files for sending, I was just blankly staring at the services applet for some time and bam, the process moved from "stopping to "stopped". So I tried this a few more times and it worked every time ! In fact, immediately after reboot, the service stops doubleplusquick. It is only after quite some data moved that it is sluggish. In my case it takes around 7 min. to stop, after the "failed to stop service" popup appears. So, do you need the traces anymore. At what time exactly do you want me to take the dump ? (memory). Regarding the balancing stuff. I attach the settings screen. Since I have added some more drives to the pool, I'm waiting to see the behavior again, while continuing the fill-up. Ah, one more thing. There is a file named "trace.text" growing like a baobab in my <pool drive>\temp directory. It contains lines like: [0003676725,0x0026e0:0x2d08:0x838b4a60] wmi\provider\vs_trace.cxx(0360): **************************************************************** [0003676725,0x0026e0:0x2d08:0x838b4a60] wmi\provider\vs_trace.cxx(0362): ** TRACING STARTED - ProcessId: 0x26e0, ContextId: 0x838b4a60 [0003676725,0x0026e0:0x2d08:0x838b4a60] wmi\provider\vs_trace.cxx(0371): ** Current time: 05/20/14 16:59:34 [0003676725,0x0026e0:0x2d08:0x838b4a60] wmi\provider\vs_trace.cxx(0372): ** Command-line: C:\Windows\system32\wbem\wmiprvse.exe [0003676725,0x0026e0:0x2d08:0x838b4a60] wmi\provider\vs_trace.cxx(0374): **************************************************************** [0003676725,0x0026e0:0x2d08:0x838b4a60] ENTER {CInstanceProv::Initialize}: [0003676740,0x0026e0:0x2d08:0x838b4a60] ENTER {CVssSafeCriticalSection::Init}: [0003676740,0x0026e0:0x2d08:0x838b4a60] EXIT {CVssSafeCriticalSection::Init}: hr: 0x00000000 [0003676740,0x0026e0:0x2d08:0x838b4a60] EXIT {CInstanceProv::Initialize}: hr: 0x00000000 [0003676740,0x0026e0:0x2d08:0x838b4a60] ENTER {CInstanceProv::DoCreateInstanceEnumAsync}: [0003676740,0x0026e0:0x2d08:0x838b4a60] ENTER {CreateClass}: Is it DrivePool that requested this WMI trace ? or I should look for suspects elsewhere ? Respectfully, Yossi

Thank you Chris, Well, the balancer is on the percentage setting, unless I am blind; there are other balancers present, but only those supplied by covecube. I attach screen prints of the balancer page and the drive situation. Regarding the service hang stuff, it will take me some time since if I try to stop the service I will have to reboot; I can't reboot in the next day or so. Regards, Yossi

Hi all, I recently installed DP and I'm playing with it right now. Great product. I have around 50 TB of data on 25 drives, I'm now testing various configurations with a pool of 20 TB of fresh disks plus some other disks I've connected for testing. Since I'm using quite a lot of hardlinks I'm running the last beta version (2.1.0.541) with some bugs in this area corrected. At this point I don't test file duplication. I started to load data into the pool by the standard balancer, and at some point I installed the Disk space Equalizer plugin in order to change balance from absolute amount to percentage left. The arrows the the UI changed accordingly; however when continuing to load into the pool, it seems that the change had no effect - the balance was still by absolute space left - and very precise in that also. I've put the balancer plugin at the very top of the list so it would have highest priority. How do I continue from here ? I have another problem - The DrivePool service wont stop. It will stay in the "stopping" state forever (or at least until I reboot after quite a few minutes). I'm running Win Server 2008R2 on a real machine (no VM). Thanks Edit: After yet another reboot, I have a strange situation. The rebalancer started working, but the pool is still being filled wrong (i.e. files go to the wrong drives according to the percentage policy). So it's like the rebalancer is fighting a bad filling policy.