Just upgraded from 6.8 to 6.9, and it does seem snappier!

 

Confusion:  I have a VM running SageTV PVR and I've created a dedicated share for the TV recordings, using the "include/exclude disk" feature in the share setup. In other words, I have 5 data disks + parity and I use Disk 5 for recordings and it has parity protection.  I'm not using Unassigned Devices for this.

 

It *seems* to me that w/ 6.9 I might be able to create a new pool just for the recordings, and include just disk 5 to this.  That is, I'd have 2 pools:  1) all stuff (4 disks), 2) just PVR recordings (1 disk).

 

-Is this the correct understanding of what's possible or advisable?

-will both pools be able to use the same parity drive for protection?

-If I try to set this up, will I have to wipe my current disk 5 (pvr), or can I move it to a new pool without losing recordings?

 

Note - I realize, and assume, I don't have a grasp on this!

Pools are separate from the parity array. Usually people put SSDs in these pools to get storage that is faster than the parity array, but HDDs can be used. To get redundancy in a pool you would have to put multiple disks in a btrfs raid configuration.

Seems to me what you already have works as you intend. What did you hope to gain by changing it?

Ahh ok. I do also have a redundant cache (2 disks). 
 

I was thinking that by having a ‘PVR’ pool, I could more easily ensure my shares didn’t use this 1 disk vs the others (leverage abstraction). Now I have to ensure every other share doesn’t use that disk. 
 

good point though, it is working and I now understand pools aren’t for my use case I guess. Thanks!

Another approach would be to exclude the disk from user shares in Global Share Settings, then no user shares would use the disk. But you would have to specify the disk instead of a user share in any path that needed to access it, and you would have to share the disk on the network if you wanted to access it that way.

Interesting, but prob not advantageous for me as I share the recordings on my plex server as well. Thanks for the comprehensive thinking.