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SSD Optimizer Balancing Plugin


Alex

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Is there a way to tell DrivePool to write all the initial data ONLY to the SSD's, and then write the 3rd copy of the data to the slower HDD later?

Or should I just remove the HDD from the pool, and use some other backup software to create weekly backups from the pool to the HDD separately?

 

No. There isn't. 

 

Real Time duplication writes to ALL destination drives in parallel. Period.  

You can disable Real Time duplication, but that has other issues (and we don't recommend it).  This writes to ONLY one disk, and then duplicates later.  

 

The "best" solution may be to write to a folder that is 2x duplicated, and then move to a 3x duplicated folder. That should "solve" the problem without buying a 3rd SSD. 

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  • 1 month later...

Maybe I don't have it set up properly, but it appears that the SSD optimizer is completly ifnoring my file placement options.

 

I want a certain folder to always be on the SSD so I unchecked my Archive drive in File placement, but the optimizer still moves all the files over to the archive drive.

 

Is it supposed to ignore my file placement earmarks?

 

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hmm, well that's weird, it moved everything off on the last balance, but I stepped through the settings screens and clicked saved again.

 

Now it appears to be moving it back, very odd. 

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---------------------

 

OK so it re balanced like it should have, moving everything I pinned to the SSD back.  Then once done at the bottom it says that the balance was not "optimal" I clicked the re-balance and it appears to be moving my pinned items back off the SSD Again. 

 

I assume it would continue this vicious cycle over and over?

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Maybe I don't have it set up properly, but it appears that the SSD optimizer is completly ifnoring my file placement options.

 

I want a certain folder to always be on the SSD so I unchecked my Archive drive in File placement, but the optimizer still moves all the files over to the archive drive.

 

Is it supposed to ignore my file placement earmarks?

 

------

 

hmm, well that's weird, it moved everything off on the last balance, but I stepped through the settings screens and clicked saved again.

 

Now it appears to be moving it back, very odd. 

 

Did you check the notes? 

 

 

* If you've created file placement rules that are attempting to keep files on drives that are designated as SSDs,

  then you should disable the "Unless a drive is being emptied" option, under the "File placement settings" category, 
  on the "General" tab. Otherwise, your File Placement rules will not be respected by this plugin (because it is 
  emptying the SSD drives).

 

Make sure that this setting is unchecked, and it should then behave as expected. 

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I was reading about that but, another oddity I unchecked the SSD optimizer altogether and it still did it.

 

It seems that it is marking my SSD to have 0 unduplicated files (the blue indicator is all the way to the left) and maybe that is why it keeps clearing it out?

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If you mean with StableBit Scanner, I believe that you should be fine, regardless.  It will still respect the real time placement limits created by the StableBit Scanner balancer. 

 

If you want to test out this specific scenario, you can use the "simulate" section in StableBit Scanner. Enable the simulated unreadable sectors option, and let it rescan.  That should trigger the specific behavior (once Scanner flags the disk). 

 

http://stablebit.com/Support/Scanner/2.X/Manual?Section=Simulate

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  • 3 months later...

To confirm, and expand upon some thoughts in here:

I had a passing thought that I could split a 250gb ssd into 3 partitioned drive letters as a landing zone. This would address any files that use 3x dupe. I admit that this would be greatly vulnerable to a single point of failure and so is not the best practice at all.

The problem is that I'd be splitting that specific sata port's bandwidth in 3 as well.... so instead of 600 mbps I'd probably be back down to 200 mbps after all. Correct?

 

Also, if I'm primarily writing to the pool via network transfer I wouldn't necessarily see much advantage anyways..? It's on a gigabit LAN but some devices still use 100mb nic's.

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it should work but you will get less then 200mb/s write to the "other" two drives i would suspect - depends on the size of the files you are copying as you will swamp the cache on the ssd and speeds will drop a fair bit to the "native speed of the drive"/3

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Sorry, let me expand:

The os drive is an ssd. Then I have a pool of 6 6tb HDDs that would be the archival drives. This pool reports ~200 mbps in crystaldiskinfo as expected.

I am considering using an ssd setup as a landing zone with ssd optimizer plug in.

I would need 3 ssd drives to attain ssd r/w speeds and work with 3x dupe, correct?

 

Then, splitting an ssd into 3 drive letter partitions would defeat the ssd transfer speed goal, correct?

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Splitting an SSD into 3 partitions for feeder-purposes would cut the speed of the writes 3 ways, but if you're on a gigabit lan, that only needs to be ~125MB/s. Good SSDs (samsung 850s, etc) should probably handle 375MB/s sequential write without any issue. I haven't personally tried this, though...just my $0.02

 

Not sure about your use case, but personally I plan to just use the plugin without realtime duplication so I only need one feeder disk without needing to partition anything. The slight risk of losing data I uploaded that same day is something I can live with personally, and I don't have in-use data that I work with on my DP volume which is ever locked up by a program.

 

Alternately...if drive slots are the issue... I know this seems weird, but why not buy one or two of these:

 

https://www.amazon.com/Kingwin-KW-PCI2H25-Mounting-Bracket-Specifications/dp/B00IB6I43K/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1482192742&sr=8-1&keywords=pci+ssd+slot+mount

 

Then just mount your SSDs inside the chassis and plug them into your onboard SATA ports. That's what I do for all my OS drives. If you buy two, you could stick your OS SSD in one, and then still be able to mount the 3 dedicated feeder SSDs, and you'd actually come out with an additional hotswap bay clear.

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  • 2 weeks later...

To confirm, and expand upon some thoughts in here:

I had a passing thought that I could split a 250gb ssd into 3 partitioned drive letters as a landing zone. This would address any files that use 3x dupe. I admit that this would be greatly vulnerable to a single point of failure and so is not the best practice at all.

The problem is that I'd be splitting that specific sata port's bandwidth in 3 as well.... so instead of 600 mbps I'd probably be back down to 200 mbps after all. Correct?

 

Also, if I'm primarily writing to the pool via network transfer I wouldn't necessarily see much advantage anyways..? It's on a gigabit LAN but some devices still use 100mb nic's.

 

 

No, this would not work.. StableBit DrivePool does detect what physical drive that the volumes are located on, and will actively avoid placing the duplicates on the same physical disk. 

 

(this is also part of why we don't support Dynamic Disks, as this detection gets INCREDIBLY complex when allowing Dynamic Disks). 

 

You'd need to use three different SSD drives to accomplish this. 

Alternately...if drive slots are the issue... I know this seems weird, but why not buy one or two of these:

 

https://www.amazon.com/Kingwin-KW-PCI2H25-Mounting-Bracket-Specifications/dp/B00IB6I43K/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1482192742&sr=8-1&keywords=pci+ssd+slot+mount

 

You could also get a few M.2 cards, and a PCI-e  adapter card. 

 

This would use up a lot less space, wouldn't require SATA or power hookups, and allow you to install multiple cards, side by side, getting PLENTY of drives in there. 

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  • 1 month later...

You might want to mention in the release notes that the plugin cannot be installed on the beta versions of DrivePool. At least that seems to be the case for DrivePool 2.2.0.738.

 

This can happen if the balancer is already installed.  The WIndows Installer service gives a "bad" error code that is misleading. 

 

Check DrivePool to verify if the balancer is present or not. 

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Hey Drashna.

 

Ive been using Drivepool since back in the WHS/WGS days.

I dont come around here nowadays, simply cos it just works and never really needed much help in receny years.

 

One thing though that I have meant to clarify with the SSD Optimizer (The only balancer I need) I get the settings in the first imageSxXWQFI.png​

F3YooKy.png

But have never really been sure whether the SSD's should be ticked in the second one here in the file placement options.

I have had them ticked in the past. But even when they aren't it still seems to use the SSD's for cache. (or maybe not)

Just curious if those SSD boxes should be ticked?

 

EDIT... Never mind... Just noticed stuff writing directly to the archive drives with those SSD boxes unticked. :-)

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By default, it should respect the settings.   You can take a read here at why specifically: 

http://stablebit.com/Support/DrivePool/2.X/Manual?Section=Balancing%20Settings

 

 

But basically, the file placement rules should respect the real time placement limiters (which could be a problem here), And the balancing plugins will respect the file placement rules. 

 

If you uncheck the "file placement rules respect real-time placement limits set by the balancing plugins" it should definitely write to the Archive drives when the file placement rules "demand" it.   But in your config, it should work fine, as well. 

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  • 7 months later...

I'm new to DrivePool and a little confused.

 

I'm setting up a simple server, and none of the data in the drive pool is terribly important.  It's just going to be movies and some recorded stuff for a Plex server.

 

So, I don't think I need the 'real time' redundancy thing .. mirroring the files at a particular time once a day will suit me fine.

 

Given this, my server setup is 

 

C:\ OS drive (Windows 7) 128 Gb SSD

 

D:  SATA drive (1Tb/ 2Tb) that are added to the pool

E:  SATA drive (1Tb/ 2Tb) that are added to the pool

F:  SATA drive (1Tb/ 2Tb) that are added to the pool

etc

 

 

What I'd like is to use the C:\ SSD drive as a "landing zone" or cache for incoming files that will eventually end up in the drive pool

 

What configuration options make things work this way ?

 

Thanks !

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For the real time duplication, if the files stay open, then they may not get duplicated.  

 

Otherwise, that should be fine.

 

As for configuring it, just download the SSD Optimizer Balancer Plugin, install it and enable it.  Select the roles for the drive, and that's it. 

https://stablebit.com/DrivePool/Plugins

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  • 5 months later...

Not a problem: not using DP duplication at all: nada, zip, zilch. All files are duplicated to totally separate pools, in different enclosures. Backup copies are made every night from the main pool to the NearLine and OffSite enclosure pools.

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