My unraid server is full, it cannot hold any more than 14 drives.

 

So I either have to buy a bigger case and power supply, or just build another server.  I like the idea of a second server, I own a 2nd copy of unraid already, and the price is about the same and I get more redundancy.

 

My question is about user shares though, can I still have all my movies in a single user share called "Movies", this is very important for the WAF.

 

 

Currently, there is no easy way to merge the shares across 2 servers. The best I can offer is to suggest that you dedicate either your original server or the second server to only movies, and serve the rest of your shares from the second box. If your server currently contains only the movies share, then your only option I can see is expanding to a new case, or spending huge $$$ on a bunch of new 4TB drives.

 

What is your current drive inventory?

Darn, I was afraid that might be the answer. 

 

I have more than a movies share, but dividing up my user shares across the two servers would work fairly well, rather than having each share exist on each server.  Bit of a hassle moving files around, but perhaps do-able.

 

Thank you for your input.

 

Have you thought about using an external SAS cable to another case with a SAS expander.  You wouldn't have to buy a second motherboard memory and processor.  Though depending on what hardware you were planning on using in your new server this may be more or less expensive solution but all your stuff would be on one server.

I will have to check into the SAS expander, thank you.

 

I was hoping that might be possible based on how other NAS solutions like Synology work.

 

 

Is it possible to expand my unraid server using eSATA?  for example, a 4 or 8 disc eSATA enclosure? 

Would there be a performance hit?  I typically only read 1 media file at a time, rarely 2.

 

This for example:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111177

Or this:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132016

 

The other way I found to increase my hard drive capacity is to change my 4-in-3 raid cages for 5-in-3 raid cages.

Is it possible to expand my unraid server using eSATA?  for example, a 4 or 8 disc eSATA enclosure? 

Would there be a performance hit?  I typically only read 1 media file at a time, rarely 2.

A single esata disk would not effect performance at all. Multiple disks will start to effect it more and more, but really only when dealing with rebuilding a disk or checking parity. A 4 disk enclosure would make parity checks pretty unbearable. Normal reads should be mostly unaffected.

Those eSATA boxes are operating at 3.0Gbs, or 384 megabytes per second, giving each hard drive 96 megabytes per second. 

 

96mb/s is much faster than my current parity check, but do the theoretical numbers actual work in practice?  As long as they hit 50% of theoretical, then I would not be slowed down in my parity.

 

Some of them run 6.0Gb/s, double the numbers above, eSATA can be very very fast it seems?

 

For example this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111164

 

 

eSATA runs at SATA II speed. 3Gbps with a 10bit/8bit encoding resulting in 300MBps throughput. Adding more than 2 drives per eSATA  port will be unbearably slow during concurrent operations.

Concurrent operations being parity check?  My parity check only runs at 50MBps, would this slow down then?

 

Streaming files should be OK?

Yes. 2 drives on an eSATA operate slower then 50MBps for parity checks but still bearable. Any more than 2 and parity checks, failed disk rebuilds, and failed disk emulation become too slow to be practical. Failed disk emulation will be too slow to be any use at all.

 

I recommend this combination:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002MUYOLW/ref=asc_df_B002MUYOLW2258505?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&tag=pg-404-100-20&linkCode=asn&creative=395097&creativeASIN=B002MUYOLW  (2 of these)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115073&Tpk=rocket%20622

 

If the speeds are acceptable and you can live with even slower performance than return it and get the parts you listed. Streaming from a single disk should not be effected.

I have a friend with 2 Sylology 4-drive NAS devices hooked together via a single eSATA cable, he never mentioned his parity checks being slow, is this an unraid limitation then, or a limitation of the eSATA hardware?

 

I will check how fast his parity checks go and report back for comparison.

 

 

Marked as [sOLVED] but how?

 

I am now in the same situation with a full microserver of 6 drives and, having a second microserver ready to build, would like to retain a top level share of 'Movies' if possible rather than having to split the sets alphabetically or by genre. Any new ideas out there?

Mount one of the servers into the other one, then use symbolic links. If you use XBMC, just use smart playlists.

One idea is to put a storage gateway in front of the two unraid servers and combine the directories like this: https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthread.php?54214-HOWTO-BIND-mounts-and-NFS-exporting-of-combined-directories

 

Tim

 

Marked as [sOLVED] but how?

 

I am now in the same situation with a full microserver of 6 drives and, having a second microserver ready to build, would like to retain a top level share of 'Movies' if possible rather than having to split the sets alphabetically or by genre. Any new ideas out there?