Throttle or pause mover based on disk utilization

[BlueBull]

Hi peeps

This is just a random thought, there might be heaps of reasons why this isn't possible. However, I had it happen a few times where we were watching some media at a time when we normally wouldn't be doing that when the mover process kicked in and our stream started buffering and stuttering. I've also had the performance of manual file copies, automatic file copies and other disk-intensive operations tank because the mover kicked in. I know that I can schedule around that for instance by only running the mover at night, but my job oftentimes requires me to be active at night. Apart from that, I also like to schedule the mover as often as is workable, since my cache pool isn't protected (it's not a big problem if I lose files because of this) and so it would be nice if I could schedule it frequently

That gave me the thought that rather than schedule the mover outside the hours that full bandwidth should be available, which would be difficult, it would be cool if there was an option to have the mover pause, throttle or not start at all if it detects disk activity on the source or destination disk(s), above a customizable level, either relative or absolute. Combined with a setting which enables you to choose to either run the mover (or de-throttle it) ASAP after it detects disk activity below a customizable threshold for at least a customizable length of time, or to postpone it and run it when the next schedule interval comes along. This would also open up the possibility of having the mover on a dynamic schedule, where it kicks in as soon as it detects the system isn't being used for a certain amount of time, which would be a kind of "continuous mode"

Just a suggestion. Wondering what you guys think about this? It's not impossible (likely even) that I've missed a glaring reason this isn't possible or is already implemented, so I'm always up for a learning experience. It also might be that this feature request is a better fit for the CA mover tuning plugin of course. If so I will ask there

Cheers!

Edited January 22, 2023 by BlueBull