Hi

 

have just purchased an unraid licence since 5 final has been released.

 

up to now i've had sab etc running on a separate machine, but now i want to get it all on my unraid box which is a media server the majority of the time.

 

i have started reading some of the guides and it seems there are 2 options,

 

1. to use the cache drive, which i have a 250gb 7200rpm drive available

 

2. to use snap and an ssd, which i have a 32gb ss drive available.

 

any advice on the best way to? i don't really load that much data on to the server so i can live without a cache drive if the ssd is going to be better.

 

many thanks for your time

This question would make a good "Poll" thread.

 

I like the the cache drive answer because that's what I'm using. I've used both a spinner and SSD and I like how easy it was to set up within unRAID. I don't run mysql mainly because I have the idea you have to take special care with it when powering down the server.

You don't have to use snap to mount a ssd and use it. Just mount it in your go script.

 

In fact as snap is a plugin it will run relatively late in the boot process. It may load and mount your drive after some of your apps (that would need  to access the drive) have started. This might cause some unwanted problems.

 

Snap is (at least I think so) meant to recognize drives you hotplug to the system, mount them automatically and perform a number of tasks for the newly connected drive (backup or whatever).

 

Snap is not meant (IMHO) to mount drives that stay permanently in your system.

many thanks for the replies guys 

 

i think i'll probably use the 250 as a cache drive then, there's alot more info out there on using a cache whilst from what ive seen its a little scarce on using snap.

It's worth mentioning about having your applications running on the cache drive you probably won't see it spin down. I would imagine running mysql would never allow the drive to spin down.

 

I finally removed spin down timing for my SSD cache drive after noticing some odd entries in my syslog. The way SAB and SB work will keep the drive spinning. A small, inexpensive SSD is a better solution.

It's worth mentioning about having your applications running on the cache drive you probably won't see it spin down. I would imagine running mysql would never allow the drive to spin down.

 

I finally removed spin down timing for my SSD cache drive after noticing some odd entries in my syslog. The way SAB and SB work will keep the drive spinning. A small, inexpensive SSD is a better solution.

 

If using MySQL just for XBMC the drive spins down properly

 

Sent from a mobile device, sorry for any typos.

 

 

Thanks for clearing that up!

It's worth mentioning about having your applications running on the cache drive you probably won't see it spin down. I would imagine running mysql would never allow the drive to spin down.

 

I finally removed spin down timing for my SSD cache drive after noticing some odd entries in my syslog. The way SAB and SB work will keep the drive spinning. A small, inexpensive SSD is a better solution.

 

thanks again for all the replies

 

ah, 32gb ssd is too small for a cache drive though right? ideally it would be best to have a 250gb ssd?

 

i was hoping to use hardware i already had to keep costs down if poss,

 

i can live without mysql but if cb and sp are set to scan say every 10 mins i take it that would keep the drive spinning?

In all likelihood, 32GB is definitely too small for a cache drive running those plugins, depending on what, of course, you're downloading with sab.  Even if you run the mover every hour, you can find yourself in a situation with 10-20GB of stuff waiting to move, downloading another 10GB, and poof, no space left on device, errors abound, syslog fills up the tmpfs and your server locks up like a prison.

 

I'll tell you what works for me and what I want to change:  I have sab/sb/cp running in RAM on /usr/local as per Influencer's plugins, with their data directories on my 1TB spinner cache drive.  My cache used to be 160GB, but it kept filling up and causing problems a la the above.  Mysql runs actually on its own 160gb drive inside the array, because I want it to have that failure tolerance.  if I had my druthers, I'd replace that 160GB mysql drive with a small ssd inside the array.  As far as I understand it, writes would still be limited by the parity drive, but reads would be super-fast, eliminating the mysql slowdown.

 

So, my 2c for you would be to, assuming you don't have a huge ssd lying around anywhere you haven't told us about, place the 32GB SSD inside the array, set up a mysql share that includes only that drive, and run mysql from there.

 

Set up sab/sb/cp on your cache drive, but loaded in RAM.  Obviously, spindown isn't an issue with ssds, but mysql doesn't keep the drive spun up anyway, it spins down when not used just like everything else.  However, this WILL result in your cache drive spinning all the time.  That's couchpotato's fault as I understand it, it constantly logs to the data location, which keeps it spinning.  To avoid seeing the spindown message over and over, might as well just disable spindown for the cache, or run CP somewhere else, or (nerd alert) modify CP's source code to log to /var/log like it should.

 

OR, you could have the 32GB ssd as your cache drive, and just set sab to unpack on the array, but that will be super-slow.

 

If you do want to leave the 32GB drive outside your array, you can do it without SNAP, but you'd have to figure out where in the boot process the plugins load, and get the drive mounted beforehand.  Probably edit /etc/fstab to mount the drive on boot at say "/mnt/ssd/", check the googleverse for instructions on that one.

 

Also, so far as I know, if you're using the mysql plugin instead of the unmenu package, mysql autostops with array shutdown or stoppage.  If you are using the unmenu package, you may have to edit the powerdown script to include a line to cleanly stop mysql.  You will have to manually stop it on the unmenu user scripts page or via command line for just stopping the array for maintenance, drive replacement, etc.  I am still using the unmenu package for mysql. just haven't gotten around to upgrading.

 

Good luck!

Interesting discussion, because till now i have Sabnzbd running on an old Pogoplug i have but i want to use it on my unRaid Server.

 

Does Sabnzbd keep the Cache Disk spinning? Because than the S3 Sleep of my Server would not work properly anymore which than would not make any sense for me.