Ok so I'm re-thinking my share setup for my media now that I have a backup server coming and I will be able to re-do all my shares if need be.  When I first setup my server I didn't give my share structure as much thought.

 

Currently my shares are setup as follows:

 

Videos (Most-free, split level 2)

\Movies\Movie Folder\Files

\TV Shows\Series\Season Folder\Files

\Stand-Up\Stand-Up Folder\Files

 

Music (Most-free, split level 1)

\Artist\Album\Song files

 

Backups (Most-free, split level 2)

\VMware\Backup name\Backup files

\PC Images\PC Name\Backup files

 

Software (Most-free, split level 2)

\Category\Application Folder\Files

 

 

I know that a bunch of these settings are not ideal as I've seen how certain files have been spread across multiple disks that I'd want to keep together (Backup Files) and others are not being spread across disks that I'd like to be (TV Show seasons).  First off I realize I probably need to split up my Movies and TV shows since keeping them on the same split level is not ideal.  I don't like how an entire show is kept on one disk which causes that disk to get filled if those season are more active than others.

 

My server often has a lot of concurrent streams (sometimes 6-8 at a time) so I'm wondering if I should go with High-water for the allocation method instead of most-free.  Should high water always be used in cases where you want to increase the performance of that share?

 

I'd love to see how others have their shares structured and/or if you have any recommendations for me.

Clearly this is largely a personal choice ... but I'll offer a few thoughts ...

 

First, "most free" will fill your disks more uniformly than other choices; but there's no particular reason to do that.  High-water will result in few disk changes as you add to a share; but will still keep data away from the slowest inner cylinders for a fairly long time.    Fill-up of course simply fills a disk before switching to the next one in the share.

 

Which method you use is almost completely irrelevant ... it just depends on how you want the disks to fill up.  Most free will keep the performance most uniform (given all drives are the same size -- which I know yours are); and fill-up will have the most variance (since as a drive gets full its performance decreases ... then when the next drive starts being used it will be at the highest performance outer cylinders).

 

Except for keeping multiple segments of a media file together (i.e. the VOB's associated with a single DVD if you store them in their original format) ... so multiple drives don't have to spin up to stream the movie or album,  it's purely cosmetic whether or not you keep various files together.    You can best control that via split levels.

 

You may want to "tweak" your split levels and allocation methods; and possibly even limit certain shares to specific disks via Includes ... but otherwise if you're happy with the logical structure of your shares, I wouldn't be overly concerned about which physical drives their files are stored on.

 

Clearly this is largely a personal choice ... but I'll offer a few thoughts ...

 

First, "most free" will fill your disks more uniformly than other choices; but there's no particular reason to do that.  High-water will result in few disk changes as you add to a share; but will still keep data away from the slowest inner cylinders for a fairly long time.    Fill-up of course simply fills a disk before switching to the next one in the share.

 

Which method you use is almost completely irrelevant ... it just depends on how you want the disks to fill up.  Most free will keep the performance most uniform (given all drives are the same size -- which I know yours are); and fill-up will have the most variance (since as a drive gets full its performance decreases ... then when the next drive starts being used it will be at the highest performance outer cylinders).

 

Except for keeping multiple segments of a media file together (i.e. the VOB's associated with a single DVD if you store them in their original format) ... so multiple drives don't have to spin up to stream the movie or album,  it's purely cosmetic whether or not you keep various files together.    You can best control that via split levels.

 

You may want to "tweak" your split levels and allocation methods; and possibly even limit certain shares to specific disks via Includes ... but otherwise if you're happy with the logical structure of your shares, I wouldn't be overly concerned about which physical drives their files are stored on.

 

Thanks gary for chiming in, as always I appreciate it.  So based on what you've said, my current setup is probably not an issue.  My main concern is really my TV shows because of how long it's taken me to compile and organize them.  I was thinking it might be best to have different seasons of the same show across multiple discs in case of a drive failure or two, I wouldn't lose the entire show (however this isn't as big of a concern now that I'll have a complete backup at all times.  I also thought that it might be better in terms of filling up my disks more uniformly since some shows are a lot more active than other shows that may have ended or just not have as many episodes.  But looking at my disks right now, with free spaces of 1.06TB, 1.16TB, 1.13TB, 1.05TB and 1.11TB, it looks like the way I have things setup right now is working pretty well.

 

On a related note, what is the best practice in terms of not overfilling disks?  Is there a recommended amount of space that is recommended to leave free so I have an idea when is a good time to start adding another drive or two?

Some disagree, but I see NO reason to not fill up your disks.    Over half of the disks on my media server show 100% in UnMenu (they've got between 22MB and 6GB free).

 

Writes do become very slow on very full disks using Reiser ... I believe that's somewhat improved with XFS, but don't know for sure, as my media server is all Reiser.

 

Bottom line:  If the disks are "active" -- i.e. a lot of write activity still going on -- then I'd probably try to not go over about 90-95% full.    But if they tend to be "static" -- i.e. storing movies that, once, written, aren't going to change, there's no reason not to simply fill them up.    I stop using them when there's no longer enough space for another movie.

 

Note that being very full has NO performance impact on READS.

 

Bottom line:  If the disks are "active" -- i.e. a lot of write activity still going on -- then I'd probably try to not go over about 90-95% full.    But if they tend to be "static" -- i.e. storing movies that, once, written, aren't going to change, there's no reason not to simply fill them up.    I stop using them when there's no longer enough space for another movie.

 

Note that being very full has NO performance impact on READS.

 

Agree with this 100%.  It all depends on use case, as do so many things in computing.  If it's going to be an active disk in terms of writes and over-writes, I like to see at least 10% free space (and more like 20% on production servers in a business environment).  But once it transitions to a "static" disk and you will be reading from the drive 99% of the time with little to no write activity, there's no reason not to fill it to the brim.

Bottom line:  If the disks are "active" -- i.e. a lot of write activity still going on -- then I'd probably try to not go over about 90-95% full.    But if they tend to be "static" -- i.e. storing movies that, once, written, aren't going to change, there's no reason not to simply fill them up.    I stop using them when there's no longer enough space for another movie.

 

Note that being very full has NO performance impact on READS.

 

Agree with this 100%.  It all depends on use case, as do so many things in computing.  If it's going to be an active disk in terms of writes and over-writes, I like to see at least 10% free space (and more like 20% on production servers in a business environment).  But once it transitions to a "static" disk and you will be reading from the drive 99% of the time with little to no write activity, there's no reason not to fill it to the brim.

 

Got it, so maybe I'll just keep my VM backups on one disk and set that one to leave 10-20% free.  The rest of my data is pretty much all video files that won't change much.

Sounds like a reasonable plan.  You know, I presume, that you don't have to monitor the free space -- just set the "min free" to whatever you want, and when the disk gets down to that amount of free space it will switch to another disk in the share.