New (to me) markers showing up in drivepool ....

[IanT]

Just recently updated drivepool to the latest build, 2.3.4.152, and I'm seeing some markers that I've never seen before. Ive attached a 'snip' of the pool window to illustrate. Can anyone tell me a) what they mean and b) why did they suddenly appear?

[Andrew]

They appeared for me after enabling the SSD optimizer balancer. I guess they are explained in the balancer settings.

[IanT]

I should have explained better, I simply updated the DrivePool software, I've had the same configuration running for years, and had the SSD Optimizer configured on this same pool for at least 3 years. These red double arrows were never present until the most recent update. There were NO changes to the balancers, limits, or placement rules. Nor indeed to any of the settings. 

My question remains -- what are they trying to tell me, and why are they red?

[Christopher (Drashna)]

The red and orange arrows are Realtime Placement limiters.  And yeah, there was a recent change that makes them show up when they wouldn't have before. 

Eg, this should be fine.  Especially as it more accurately reflects the status of the pool and balancers. 

[IanT]

Thanks Drashna, I hoped this was the case, but despite years of using your software, and no real problems ever, I'm still nervous about file systems 🙂

 

Ian T

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Absolutely understand that!  That data (can) be precious!

[IanT]

So now I just did something stupid, and I need help ..... allow me to explain

1)   I have some existing pools, and was trying to do some re-organization. 

2) I have an existing pool, lets call it PoolA, it consists of 9 drives, and is 49TB in size. It has a variety of data, replicated either 2 or 3 times, depending on the data type.

3) I have a pair of SSD's that I combined into a pool (unduplicated) called PoolB.

4) I created a new pool (PoolC) which consists of PoolB and PoolA, and I tagged PoolB as an SSD, and PoolA as an Archive

 

When I looked at the  resulting pool (PoolC) in Windows Explorer, there was nothing there, although if I look at PoolB or PoolA separately, the data is all there!!!

 

What am I doing wrong?? I'm being very cautious with this because the data in PoolA is live data, and I do NOT have independent backups of it.

HELP!!

[Shane]

DrivePool uses the drive(s) you select to create a pool (virtual drive) that can use all of the (available) space of those selected drive(s). It doesn't import existing files, it just uses the free space; you have to manually move any files you want put in the new pool.

So in your example, you have 9 HDDs and 2 SSDs. You created a Pool drive A that uses the available space of the 9 HDDs, and a Pool drive B that uses the available space of the 2 SSDs. Any existing files on those HDDs and SSDs remain where they are, outside the Pool drives.

If you then create a Pool drive C using the available space of the A and B... it still only uses the available space of those drives, and the existing files in A and B remain where they are.

If you look in one of the physical drives, say a HDD and let's call it G, you would find the hidden folder structure where DrivePool actually keeps its files, for example:

G:\Poolpart.unique_string_associated_with_Pool_A\files_and_folders_that_are_actually_in_Pool_A <-- the bit in italics is the hidden folder for pool A

Note that depending on how you've set up your duplication for A or B, the hidden folder for C might not show up inside the hidden folder for A or B in all of the physical drives, but it would exist in at least one of those drives and you would see it if you looked for hidden folders in Pool A itself, e.g. A:\Poolpart.unique_string_associated_with_Pool_C\files_and_folders_that_are_actually_in_Pool_C

Each pool also has its own individual balancing and duplication settings; e.g. if you told A to dupe everything x3, and you told B to dupe everything x2, and you told C to dupe everything x2, then a file placed in C would - because it's made from A and B - end up using space in both A and B and so in turn use space in 3 drives of A and 2 drives of B.

I hope this helps and isn't confusing! The important part is that a pool shares the available space of the drives (whether physical drives or pool drives) used to create it; it doesn't show any files placed directly in those drives (unless you start mucking with the hidden structures of those drives).

[runewa]

On 2/29/2024 at 2:04 AM, Christopher (Drashna) said:

The red and orange arrows are Realtime Placement limiters.  And yeah, there was a recent change that makes them show up when they wouldn't have before. 

Eg, this should be fine.  Especially as it more accurately reflects the status of the pool and balancers. 

I have a follow-up question to this. This is (part of) my set up:

 

The markers for my SSD (drive 2-5) correctly shows the placement limiters at 90%. But why do my archive drives (2-2, 2-4 and 3-1) say 0%? From the settings in Options I would expect these to show 95%

Or am I not getting this correctly?

 

[Shane]

It looks like the markers for the real-time placement limiters show the active limits; unless/until your "SSD" drives actually hit that 90% the "Archive" drives won't be receiving any files in real-time (so they have the marker at zero).