Purchased the Stablebit bundle to combine my various storage pools together, confused how to actually make this work.

[andsoitgoes]

So as per the subject, I am currently trying to use my spare PC to set up as a drivepool to offload some of the weight currently stuck to my Synology NAS, I have a very basic one but considering I have the space to add at least 3 HDs from old NAS units into this PC, I'd like to do that.

 

However, trying to add the Synology drives is sure not as straightforward as I thought and while I'm fairly technically inclined, I've reached a wall regarding things such as ISCSI and using CloudDrive to access the network storage.

 

I currently have 16tb of JBOD on my synology nas.

 

I want to be able to include that into my Drivepool so that the data is seen there. 

 

I want to be able to have all of my currently stored media to show up in this pool.

 

I've set up CloudDrive and that seemed like it would be super easy, added the entirety of my media folder into there, but I could not in any way create a mounted drive that would show me all the items I have stored there, and I'm left befuddled to say the least.

 

Can you help with this? I'd really, really like to get this going.

 

Where I stand now: I "created" a new drive in CloudDrive but the storage options did not make sense and still don't, and I'm left now with a random 10GB share. The whole point was to have my existing media available in my Drivepool, not create cordoned off spaces that aren't easily accessible directly from my Synology or my Pi which is what I use to manage the different "Arr" systems.

 

Hope you can provide a bit of guidance. To say the instructions on the "file Share" within CloudDrive are leaving me a little confused is an understatement, it's lacking so much information that I'm left even more confused.

[Shane]

Basically if you have a NAS and a PC and you'd like to pool them via CloudDrive and DrivePool, it would go like this:

• install DrivePool and CloudDrive on the PC
• use CloudDrive to "connect" to a File Share on the NAS (or via FTP or other method applicable to your NAS)
• use CloudDrive to "create" a cloud drive using the above connection (the size you choose here can be changed later)
  • it will create a folder in that share to store the virtual drive's data (basically CloudDrive's equivalent of a VHDX image file, if that helps)
• use DrivePool to create a new pool
  • when you add drives, it creates a folder on that drive to store that drive's portion of the pool (if you're familiar with linux file systems then DrivePool is similar to mergerfs and unionfs, in that it logically "joins" the folders of existing drives and presents them as "one" drive, instead of being block-based like zfs etc).
• use DrivePool to add the PC's physical drives to the pool
• use DrivePool to add the NAS's cloud drive to the pool
• you can now move files into the pool
• you can create network shares to it just like to a normal drive, so other devices in your network can access the content / move content into it.

Does that help?

[andsoitgoes]

Okay - yes, I think so. The big area where I'm confused is the cloud drive that is created on my NAS.

 

Because that creates a file system that's wholly inaccessible to my NAS, correct? At least not directly, correct?

 

So is there any way to do that, or is there a way to ensure that the cloud drive is expandable without creating issues on my NAS for storage. 

 

I'm wondering if the better solution is to leave my Synology NAS alone and any of the "extra" drives that I can't fit into my physical PC I'll put in a secondary NAS and be done with things.

 

Ideally, I would prefer to have one "whole" drive, rather than it split even between 2 different devices, but it doesn't seem like that's going to be a solvable problem with my setup, right?

 

Also, what other settings should I configure on that share, ALSO (also) I removed the connection to the file share, but it doesn't seem possible to remove the file system I created? So I'm left a little.... lost there.

 

Just to confirm, I can't select an existing folder with data to use within Drivepool, can I? Is it even possible to use a LUN/iSCSI on my Synology to do so? That is definitely above my paygrade! 

 

So to answer your question in the longest way possible, yes but also no! However I really appreciate it. 

 

I REALLY wish I could just stick a networked drive into the pool, is there ANY way to possibly do that even in a kludgy way?

[Shane]

"Okay - yes, I think so. The big area where I'm confused is the cloud drive that is created on my NAS.
Because that creates a file system that's wholly inaccessible to my NAS, correct? At least not directly, correct?
So is there any way to do that, or is there a way to ensure that the cloud drive is expandable without creating issues on my NAS for storage."

Correct: you connect Cloud Drive to a shared folder on your NAS, and then create a cloud drive that exists as a folder of files inside that shared folder, and doing that effectively mounts the cloud drive on your PC. You can expand (or shrink) the size of the cloud drive, and that's how much space its folder of files uses up of the share on your NAS (so if the share had 5 TB available then you could expand the cloud drive up to 5 TB, etc).

"I'm wondering if the better solution is to leave my Synology NAS alone and any of the "extra" drives that I can't fit into my physical PC I'll put in a secondary NAS and be done with things. Ideally, I would prefer to have one "whole" drive, rather than it split even between 2 different devices, but it doesn't seem like that's going to be a solvable problem with my setup, right?"

Yes, if you don't want to be splitting your storage over multiple devices then you'd have to get a bigger NAS or PC with room for extra drives (internally or via an external drive dock attached via USB or eSATA or whatever). E.g. I'm using an old eight-bay tower PC as my home server.

"Also, what other settings should I configure on that share, ALSO (also) I removed the connection to the file share, but it doesn't seem possible to remove the file system I created? So I'm left a little.... lost there."

As far as your NAS is concerned it's just another folder of files inside the shared folder, so you could use the Synology's File Station to delete that folder of files like any other (though if it's currently attached in CloudDrive you can "destroy" it there on the PC and it will clean itself up on the NAS as well).

"Just to confirm, I can't select an existing folder with data to use within Drivepool, can I?"

Correct: unfortunately DrivePool can only add local basic disks (that are formatted as NTFS or ReFS volumes) to a pool; CloudDrive's virtual drives use the SCSI interface to indistinguishably emulate such a local basic disk, so you'd need something that could do the same.

"Is it even possible to use a LUN/iSCSI on my Synology to do so? That is definitely above my paygrade!""

Turns out it's apparently surprisingly easy (first link is a short no-frills how-to, second link has someone explaining more about how it all works) but I don't currently have a Synology NAS to play with it to see if DrivePool will recognise the resulting volume as a poolable disk. If you're willing please give it a try!

I believe however that you'd still be unable to directly move data between your NAS share and your NAS LUN - you'd still have to move them via the PC that's mounting the drive on the LUN?