Hey i've been looking into the idea of making a cached games share for my unraid gaming VM, but to me it doesn't look like the caching system in unraid covers my needs, or maybe there's something I don't understand about the different caching methods?

 

The most logical approach I found was to use the array as main storage and the cache as second storage option (move from Array -> Cache)

But this presents me with a couple issues:

1st issue i find is that if my game library exceeds the 1tb of my cache drive (which it will quickly) how does unraid know which files and folders to move to the cache drive? I was hoping unraid prefers the most frequently/recently used files to store on the cache, but as far as i can tell there's no tiered caching system in unraid?

2nd issue is, is there a way to invoke the mover to move the files to the array, once the're being read on the drive?
If i use the array as the initial download path, that mean they won't be on the cache, once i want to play them.
I was hoping there would be an option to move the files to cache upon reading, but afik there's not a way to mitigate this either?

If there's a way to set this up in mover, with a docker/plugin or perhaps passthrough the ssd to the vm and use host caching instead?
Cheers

Edited March 11, 20242 yr by jztreso
thought of multiple options that might fix my issue

Short answer, the "cache" nomenclature is a holdover from very early in Unraid's history, but it was never a full "cache" in the classic sense.

 

The preferred term nowadays is pools, since there can be multiple types and purposes for these groupings of single or multiple disks.

 

The mover tuning plugin may provide some of the functionality you are looking for.

On 3/11/2024 at 10:31 AM, jztreso said:

Edited March 11, 2024 by jztreso
thought of multiple options that might fix my issue

 

 

Hi Jztreso,

 

What did you figure out? I'm looking at something similar but with lightroom picture files. What if I move them to the Array but need to edit the batch 1-2 weeks later?

 

Thanks!

1 hour ago, VeloxNex said:

 

 

Hi Jztreso,

 

What did you figure out? I'm looking at something similar but with lightroom picture files. What if I move them to the Array but need to edit the batch 1-2 weeks later?

 

Thanks!

Honestly I just gave up on it, since unraid doesn't have any mover functionality based on tiered directory activity.
I think you could maybe make it work if you have an external service managing the data between the array and your ssd.
If you manage to make an iSCSI drive on your array and pass that on to a VM, together with an SSD, you could probably use some kind of windows raid or tiered caching software inside that to manage your files.

Obviously that would only really make sense if you use that VM as your lightroom pc.
The iSCSI drive also wouldn't be scalable i believe, so you'd have to pick a capacity on your array dedicated to that.
Moving from the iSCSI drive to the array for cold storage also couldn't be done with the mover, since ISCSI data isn't visible on the array.