Settings clarification please

[klepp0906]

Man if i dont feel like a familiar face around these parts at this point.  I just dont want any surprises so i want to get this right he first time, for the long haul.

My intentions are to use ordered file placement to keep what i have together, and fill drives sequentially to make life easy with snapraid.   so far ive done no balancing and disabled automatic balancing. 

under balancers ive left the hierarchy at default (in case i want to use others later i'll have a lay of the land) and disabled all of them except ordered file placement.  Ive used that to set my drive order and gave it a 90% limit.

assuming I want the aforementioned behavior,  how do i want the following settings, checked or unchecked?

1 - Allow balancing plug-ins to force immediate balancing (regardless of the automatic balancing setting).

2 - File placement rules respect real-time file placement limits set by the balancing plug-ins.

3 - Balancing plug-ins respect file placement rules.

4 - Unless the drive is being emptied.



Now the only other use-case I can foresee in the near future is potentially enabling the scanner plug-in for evacuation.  If i were to do so, would i leave it where it is, or move it below Ordered file placement and how would those 4 settings change?

Ugh, i feel like after this I can finally be free of spamming these forums in perpetuity

[Jonibhoni]

Hi klepp

So my thoughts on this:

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1 - Allow balancing plug-ins to force immediate balancing (regardless of the automatic balancing setting).

This will only affect balancers which do trigger immediate balancing. The most prominent being "StableBit Sanner" balancer, which allows immediate evacuation of damaged drives once a defect/smart error is found. Otherwise, the evacuation would have to wait until the next scheduled balancing pass, so, eternally, in your case. If you plan to use StableBit scanner in conjunction with DrivePool eventually, you should check it.

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2 - File placement rules respect real-time file placement limits set by the balancing plug-ins.

-> Only relevant if you actually use "File Placement" rules (rules per folder).

"real-time file placement limits" are constraints on where to place NEW files, at the moment of creating/moving them to the pool. If you check this, all balancers which use "real-time file placement limits", e.g. StableBit Scanner, SSD optimizer, Drive Usage Limiter, will take precedence over per-folder file placement rules. Otherwise, per-folder file placement rules will override those limits, allowing files to be placed e.g. on defective drives (Scanner plugin), or drives other than the SSD cache drive (SSD optimizer) if you have respective rules set up. I guess you want to check this one, if you want no files to be placed on drives flagged as defective by scanner.

Btw., you can see the kind of balancing rules active in the disk view. For example, "real time file placement limiters" (restrictions for placing NEW files) are shown as red markers:

(in this example, new files will not be placed on F)

While normal balacing targets (targeted disk usage for moving EXISTING files around) are shown in blue:

(in this example, triggering a balancing pass will move files away from F until target is reached)

https://stablebit.com/Support/DrivePool/2.X/Manual?Section=Disks List#Balancing Markers

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3 - Balancing plug-ins respect file placement rules.

-> Only relevant if you actually use "File Placement" rules (rules per folder).

Same as "2 - File placement rules respect real-time file placement...", but for existing files rather than new ones. You basically decide if you have set a file placement rule for folder X to reside on drive X, but some balancer plugin says X should go on drive Y, which one takes precedence. But I'm unsure here (@Christopher (Drashna) ?), if this option a) only becomes important once there is no other solution to solve a balancing conflict, in the meaning of that balancers will care for file placement rules "if possible" even if this box is unchecked, or if they will b) completely ignore file placement rules if this box is unchecked, even if there were solutions that satisfy both parties.

I would have it checked. If you have manual per-folder file placement rules, you probably have them for a reason, so you want balancers stick to them, too. (especially blunt, sweeping ones like "Disk Space Equalizer" or "Volume Equalization").

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4 - Unless the drive is being emptied.

-> Only relevant if you actually use "File Placement" rules (rules per folder).

A subcase of "Balancing plug-ins respect file placement..."). You should have this one checked. If you're emptying your drive because of ...

• Removing it via the GUI
• Evacuating a drive because of scanner alert

...you problably don't want any files to be left on it, even if it goes against your per-folder file placement rules.

 

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If i were to do so, would i leave it where it is, or move it below Ordered file placement

You want the scanner plugin to be first. Otherwise, files will be placed on defective drives because Scanner plugin rules are overriden by other balancers. (the top one has the last word)

[klepp0906]

thank you very much for the detailed reply.  youve been very helpful and i appreciate the time it took.  sounds like outside of a bit of clarification on ~3 i have a much better understanding.  

seems like the defaults are defaults for a reason.

ive recently decided to nix the whole ordered file placement idea anyhow.  while it has merits I believe it runs converse to an idea of pooling to begin with.  i can not only wash my hands of being concerned what is where and the micromanagement it will involve, but I also dramatically decrease the load on snapraid by not having my honking 10TB+ disks filled to the brim first (which is how it is atm, largest > smallest)

all I lose is a bit of sanity (ocd) and a better idea of what would be missing if something died.  I have to surrender to scanner/snapraid/local backups/databases doing their job.  Anything thats "truly" unrecoverable is backed up anyhow.  In the end it would just be time and/or willpower to pick up the pieces lol.  

I'm actually doing a first balancing pass atm.  I reset everything to default, enabled disk space equalizer by percentage (it was the option that got my large disks to the lowest data volume relative to the smaller disks to have them closer in actual data since snapraid operates on file not block its important for efficiency). 

based on its current progress it looks like 3-4 days lol.  im sure my first snapraid sync will take the same.  ooof.   

after that i'll disable equalizer and automatic balancing and let it fly.  (maybe all other balancers too except scanner).  Since we dont want things moving after that and from what i understand drivepool will just always place on new drives with the largest amount of free space.