Automate Bringing new drives into array

[ryan8382]

It would really be nice to automate the adding drives to array operation. It would be great if you could flag a drive for a particular position and schedule that to happen so you don't have to take down everything.

[itimpi]

It would really be nice to automate the adding drives to array operation. It would be great if you could flag a drive for a particular position and schedule that to happen so you don't have to take down everything.

I am not quite sure what you are asking for.  Is this not what effectively happens anyway?  Stop array; assign disk; restart array.  If your disk is pre-cleared this takes just seconds.  It is not as this happens often.

 

If you are talking about the downtime to clear a disk (that is avoided if you use the pre-clear plugin) then until the pre-clear is built in it is unlikely that any significant change could be made in this area.

[ryan8382]

It would really be nice to automate the adding drives to array operation. It would be great if you could flag a drive for a particular position and schedule that to happen so you don't have to take down everything.

I am not quite sure what you are asking for.  Is this not what effectively happens anyway?  Stop array; assign disk; restart array.  If your disk is pre-cleared this takes just seconds.  It is not as this happens often.

 

If you are talking about the downtime to clear a disk (that is avoided if you use the pre-clear plugin) then until the pre-clear is built in it is unlikely that any significant change could be made in this area.

 

I have never used the pre-clear script. But basically I'm asking for this to be automated.  Have the disk pre-checked select which position you want then schedule the adding to the array. When I have time to do this isn't always when I can do it because people are using the resources.

[itimpi]

It would really be nice to automate the adding drives to array operation. It would be great if you could flag a drive for a particular position and schedule that to happen so you don't have to take down everything.

I am not quite sure what you are asking for.  Is this not what effectively happens anyway?  Stop array; assign disk; restart array.  If your disk is pre-cleared this takes just seconds.  It is not as this happens often.

 

If you are talking about the downtime to clear a disk (that is avoided if you use the pre-clear plugin) then until the pre-clear is built in it is unlikely that any significant change could be made in this area.

 

I have never used the pre-clear script. But basically I'm asking for this to be automated.  Have the disk pre-checked select which position you want then schedule the adding to the array. When I have time to do this isn't always when I can do it because people are using the resources.

I am not sure that automating the current process gains much.  With large disks (6TB/9TB) the clear process (which takes the array off-line) can easily last a day or so.      All you would be doing is deferring the time the Clear starts (and this when your days downtime starts) which is not much of a gain.

 

That is why the pre-clear can be such a huge gain as it can be done with the array operational, and it cuts the downtime to seconds so is normally easy to schedule in to do manually.  When that integration has been done then I expect some sort of more automated process becomes useful.

[garycase]

You need to simply learn how to use pre-clear ... this is even easier since there's now a pre-clear plugin that makes this easy to do from within UnRAID.

 

If you've pre-cleared a new drive, the process you're looking at literally takes only a few minutes ... once a drive is pre-cleared you simply (a) Stop the array;  (b) Assign the drive to the slot you want it in; and © Start the array ... checking the box to allow it to be formatted.    The format operation takes a few minutes ... but the array is fully useable and online while that's being done.

 

[ryan8382]

I agree that this operation only takes a few minutes, but when I have time to do it people are accessing resources on the array. So instead of scheduling the array to do it I have to schedule another time for myself to do it.

 

I agree the pre-clear script needs to be there first but this would be a great addition.

[WeeboTech]

This should be done when the administrator is fully present.

I think it's best to schedule a maintenance time with the other users rather then have this automated to the suggested degree.

[itimpi]

Another point to bear in mind is that if you do not have hot-swap cages for your drives then you are going to have to power the system down to plug the drive in (and even with hot-swap cages many people prefer to power down when changing drives).  If you have pre-cleared the disk on another system prior to do this then the downtime difference is going to be negligible.