Jump to content
  • 0

Startup issues (Coming from Flexraid)


fishie

Question

Hi guys,

 

Im just posting this to get a feel for how to configure this, I have for the last couple of years used Flexraid Pooling for my drives, as I really only need it to put together the drives into a single fileshare, this has been quite okay so far but im starting to feel the urge to test something new.

 

DrivePool appears to allow me to add some SSDs as write cache, however I cannot seem to figure out how to get this working smoothly, sometimes it would flush to the drives, other times it wouldn't - The most recent one before giving up for now it stated that it flushed all data, but the data remained on the SSD but the folder for the file was created on all 4 drives at the same time, one drive had the "subs" folder for the movie, another had the .nfo file but the actual files were still on the SSD.

 

What im looking for here, is basically a way to let everything land on the SSD, when that gets to about ~70% used it will start flushing the oldest data onto the drives, filling the drives up one by one until the threshold that I set in settings, but it appears that there's so many duplicate places to define this.

 

Can someone please help me here? I just need this as a basic pooling option, no need for duplication or anything like that as I already have backups in place for the important data.

 

In the future, I would like to use clouddrive with a google drive linked to it as a duplication destination, but it appears to not be working as intended, it will randomly drop duplicated data on the local drives aswell even though I have set them for unduplicated data only, if someone can point me in the right direction on that matter it would be awesome aswell!

 

Thanks!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 answers to this question

Recommended Posts

  • 0

Hi

 

Yes there are a lot of options :)

 

I will use my setup as an example as its close to what you want

 

I only have two add ins enabled - SSD Cache and Scanner - if you have more enabled they tend to fight with each other

 

For SSD cache make sure the drives are checked as either SSD or Archive

 

Second in Options set your limits for filling up the drives - mine are 80%, 98% or 100GB

 

Under order placement - re order your drives in the order you want data to be moved to the archive drives - and check the Prioritise option

 

From experimenting these options will work fine - only difference is i have duplication on as x2

 

Under the Settings tab - my settings are balance immediately but not more than every 3 hrs, if balance ratio drops below 99% and 5GB - rest of settings are checked

 

When i copy a large amount of data to my ssd cache - it depends on the timing and amount IF a balance occurs straight away but it will clear it out within three hours completely.

 

Been working like this for the last couple of months and results in the archive drives filling up one after another (well actually in groups of four as i have four ssd and 24 archive drives)

 

If you want to control where files go rather than let DP decide - you need to set file placement rules - i only have one so if you want advice on that you need somebody else to chip in

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Hi,

 

Thanks for taking your time here!

 

Just missing one last thing, my famous clouddrive that I would love to use as duplication, basically right now I do it manually by copying data over, which would work and I can use software to make the backups, but I would much rather simply add the drive as a duplication target so that I can simply lean back and let the software handle it.

 

But the thing here, I read that if I have an SSD landingzone for my pool, then I would need an SSD landingpool for the duplication aswell? How do I configure this? 

 

I tried adding it and using the plugin included to set the clouddrive to only get duplicated data, but I was still seeing the data being stored on local disks, I simply want ONE copy of all my data to be stored on the clouddrive and nothing else, no data writes for files etc, so basically I want everything stored locally on my drives, with the duplicated data being stored on the clouddrive that are linked to google drive.

 

Can someone shed some light on how this is done? If it's too much of hassle I will simply use a thirdparty software to handle backups :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

For the SSD write caching, you specifically need to make sure that you download, install and enable the "SSD Optimzier" balancer plugin: 

https://stablebit.com/DrivePool/Plugins

 

 

But Spider99 is right, you will want to disable all ofthe other balancers (except the StableBit Scanner one), as this is a very customized balancer. 

 

 

And he's also right. The balancer settings control how often the drives are evacuated.  

 

And if you're using duplication, then yes, you do need multiple "SSD" drives for this, as duplication is written to all destination drives in parallel (by default) 

 

 

 

As for duplicating to StableBit CloudDrive, there isn't a good way to do this. 

The couple of ways to do this normally are essentially "broken" by using the SSD Optimizer balancer plugin.

 

The best option here would be to use a sync software to copy the contents to the CloudDrive disk. 

 

 

And the normal way we'd recommend doing this is to use the Drive Usage Limiter.  But doing this would force the data to bypass the SSD drive, and be written to the specific disk (CloudDrive disk), instead. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Hi,

 

I see, that might explain the behaviour that I was seeing previously.

 

Im most likely going to move my data to drivepool instead of flexraid pooling, mainly because there's active development here which I hope will continue in the future ;)

 

Buying a license for all 3 products tomorrow when im back home, little help from my end to make ends meet and hopefully keep things running.

 

Thanks again for the help!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Yeah, without the SSD Optimizer, the normal file placement strategy is to place files on the disk with the most available free space.  This means that SSDs are likely not going to be used until the pool is mostly full.

 

That, and files don't move around much after they've been added to the pool, except in very rare situations. 

 

 

That's part of what I mean that the "SSD Optimizer" balancer plugin is "very customized".   it changes this explicitly. 

 

And glad to hear it!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

So I get things installed, seems to work just fine.


 


One thing I noticed though is that it appears to be measuring the pool as if it has duplicated data in there, are there some way to remove that? Also, some of the data are unuseable for duplication, not sure what that means..


 


Image here: 


 


http://imgur.com/NEChjpl


 


Also, can someone shed some light and check that I have things configured correctly?


 


http://imgur.com/xCTQN2W


 


http://imgur.com/hTeeVeK


Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

So the time ticked to 2AM and my pool started balancing, once that was done it started duplicating data, this confused me a bit as duplication is disabled, somethings fishy here, perhaps some items from the previous install that I tested with are messing up.

 

How do I solve this?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

I'm sorry about the delay here!

 

As for the duplicated data, if you don't have duplication enabled for any folders, then when you seeded data, you may have had duplicate files on different dives.

 

Otherwise, you should be able to use the "Folder Duplication" window to identify files. 

Alternative, you can use the "dpcmd" utility to list all the duplicated data. 

http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/1587-check-pool-fileparts/

Look for anything that has a duplication level of "2",

 

 

That said, the software should go through and unduplicate data, automatically. 

 

 

As for the "Unusable for duplication":
 

 

Unusable for duplication: the amount of space that can't be used to duplicate your files, because of a combination of the different sizes of your pooled drives, the different sizes of your files in the pool and the space consumed by the "Other" stuff. DrivePool minimises this as best it can, based on the settings and priorities of your Balancers.

 

 

 

Basically, this is because you have a significant difference in free space on several of the drives.  Those Seagate 8TB drives could account for a lot of that, as would the D:\ drive.

 

Over time, the balancing system will attempt to fix this (via the "Duplication Space Optimizer" balancer). But if that's disabled, it won't rebalance the data to remove this). 

However, if you're not using duplication at all, then this shouldn't be an issue and can be safely ignored. 

 

 

 

 

If you are using duplication, and it's not duplicating properly, try remeasuring the pool. This may help kick a duplication pass off. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Answer this question...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...