Advice re Cache Drives and Atomic Moves for Sonarr / Radarr etc

[amp88759]

Hi All

This is my first post to the community...so please .be gentle!

Also, apologies if this is in the incorrect section. I did not feel this needed to be posted in the binhex-sonarr/radarr docker topics as it is not specific to those docker threads.

I have just built my first unRAID server (three actually one for myself, my father and a friend).

What a learning curve I have had as I have always used Apple computers. I had to learn how to build PCs first.

Nonetheless it has been a fun (and trying) few weeks.

I must say that I came across SpaceInvaderOne's name on reddit decided to look him up and it went from there.

I have been a long time user of sabnzbd sonarr and more recently radarr: following various guides I have discovered Trashes Guides and setup my sonarr / radarr accordingly.

Here is my quandary. My array is 8x3tb I also have two cache drives 1x1tb NVMe and 1x500Gb NVMe.

The larger NVMe drive is the 'normal' cache drive used for appdata VMs and system shares.

The second, smaller, NVMe drive I decided I would use for download data for sabnzbd.

But following Trashes guides to get 'Atomic Moves' I have to use one share holding the downloads and media folders.

If I select my 1tb cache drive and set the share to use the cache for data (as Trash suggests) to Prefer then I find that it fills up rapidly as movies and TV Shows are added to this.

I am unable to set just the download directory to use this share unless I make downloads a share of it's own which then breaks the Atomic links.

How would I setup Atomic Moves whilst using a separate Cache drive for downloads?

Maybe I am missing something obvious but if media is stored on the array and has to be copied there from the cache then does this not defeat the logic of using atomic moves?

I only use Usenet not torrents so I do not need to 'seed' anything back to the community and I am wondering if I need to worry about atomic moves and maybe I should have separate shares for downloads movies and tvshows and just set the downloads share to use the smaller NVMe cache (set to YES).

I hope someone is able to help me see the light!

So far I am seeing that unRAID is an awesome product and much more flexible than QNAP/Synology which I have owned in the past.

Thanks to the community for being a great source of help and advice too!

[plibbitybop]

did you ever get an answer?

[itimpi]

On 5/17/2021 at 12:51 PM, amp88759 said:

If I select my 1tb cache drive and set the share to use the cache for data (as Trash suggests) to Prefer then I find that it fills up rapidly as movies and TV Shows are added to this.

Why did you use Prefer?     This means you do NOT want files to be moved to the array if there is room for them on the cache so it is not surprising the cache drive fills up.   If you want them to be moved to the array by mover then you need to use ‘Yes’ instead.

 

There is help built into the GUI on how the various options for thenUse Cache setting work, and even more detail in the online documentation accessible via the Manual link at the bottom of the Unraid GUI.

[amp88759]

Hi Guys

I did not receive an answer at the time and went back and re-read Trash's post.

I was new to unRAID at the time and was just learning the system.

I have managed to sort the problem: 'prefer' was the incorrect setting. I have now changed to 'yes'. Atomic moves etc are all working as expected.

I have built a system with 8x 3TB HDD and 2x 1Gb NVME Cache drives.

I have sabnzbd sonar radar overseer prowlarr etc all running as they should do.

This is a great community and SpaceInvaderOne's videos are very helpful.

Thanks for checking in...much appreciated.

I have since built two other unRAID servers for family and friends and I am able to resolve issues with the WIreGuard VPN.

Kind Regards

Andrew

[chrishorton7]

Hi, I’m in similar position to your first post and considering the atomic moves setup. What I’m still unclear on is how you are leveraging the two NVME drives? As don’t you just have the new single share sitting on one of those drives rather than using both?

[amp88759]

Hi there,

I have the 2x NVMe drive now installed as a Cache in a RAID btrfs configuration.

Regarding the atomic moves I have a media share with three subdirectories (downloads/movies/tvshows).

Downloads has two subdirectories (complete/incomplete).

Movies contains directories of individual movies.

TVShows contains directories of individual series.

I had not got my head around this at first with the atomic moves but it all works setup as it is now.

I hope this information helps.

[chrishorton7]

That does help but apologies for follow up questions as although I've ran unraid for 10 years, its been a simple setup with 1 cache before atomic moves was talked about. I'm just setting up brand new server so hoping to try and get as optimal as possible.

 

When you say the 2 drives installed as a cache in RAID configuration, do you mean in Unraid you added the 2 NVME drives as a single pool? 

[amp88759]

Yes. Exactly. It is Single Pool.

If you have any further questions come back to me. I check my mail fairly often.

I'm new to unRAID as of March this year but built three of them for myself, my father and a friend.

Configured all and use WireGuard to maintain other two.

Moved from a Synology. Never looked back. Run 2x Windows VMs and multiple dockers with all the *arrs.

Andrew

 

[trurl]

40 minutes ago, chrishorton7 said:

I've ran unraid for 10 years

What version are you running now? Maybe you aren't aware of some of the new features such as multidisk btrfs raid cache for fast redundant storage outside the parity array, or even newer (6.9+) multiple multidisk pools.

[chrishorton7]

Thanks, guess what I’m trying to understand is pros and cons of either using the two 500gb nvme drives I have as one pool as you have with atomic moves guide or to use each separate with one for appdata and one for downloads

[chrishorton7]

Just now, trurl said:

What version are you running now? Maybe you aren't aware of some of the new features such as multidisk btrfs raid cache for fast redundant storage outside the parity array, or even newer (6.9+) multiple multidisk pools.

Was running latest version but really hadn’t done much to the server in all that time so just had a standard ssd (non nvme) as a single cache. Have just built brand new server and have 2x 500gb samsung nvmes and trying to work out how best to setup the whole new thing. I don’t use vms- could in the future possibly - but it’s solely used for Plex/sonarr/Radarr etc

[amp88759]

Sorry: some emails arrived slowly then. I'm running 6.10-rc2 so that I can use the TPM in Windows 11 VM.

I was aware that I can have multiple multidisk pools but do not have the need for them.

I have 8x3tb drives. One is a parity.

I plan on upgrading the parity to a larger drive so I can start increasing the size of some of the others too.

The reason I ended up with 2x500Gb is there was an extra one in the box when it arrived  . I did not want to 'waste' it.

I first set mine up with single NVMe cache drive but then realised VMs and AppData stored on there which is basically all the configs for the Dockers and the Plex Library so thought it would be nice to have a RAID redundancy so that if one failed it should not cause too much hassle. The parity obviously does not backup the cache.

[chrishorton7]

ok thanks, I guess I am looking more for best performance rather than redundancy - as will be looking to use the appdata backup plugin and dont use VMs.

 

From my limited reading atomic moves seems to be good way to go performance wise - but as far as I can tell I would be using 2 NVMEs in a pool with redundancy or what I had originally planned (before learning about atomic moves) was to use 1 NVME drive for appdata and 1 for Downloads. Trying to understand which is going to bring best performance in terms of tv/movie downloads from usenet which is primary use for the server

[amp88759]

I do use the appdata backup but because I use VMs too (which I know I can also backup) I decided upon raid.

I went for performance as I have 64Gb and Ryzen 9 3900X 12 Core at 3800Mhz.

I've always used Macs but sometimes need Windows.

I use home automation too. NodeRed. HomeBridge etc etc.

I use the unRAID for TimeMachine for all the Macs too. Quite straight forward.