Spinup groups

[scottmbritton]

Hello. I am running version: 4.5.3, spinup groups is enabled

 

I have 4 drives and they are all connected to 4 of the motherboards 6 sata ports.  When I watch a movie parity disk, disk2, and disk3 spinup.  Disk 1 does not spin up.  If I access SMB shares on the server while watching the movie and disk1 spins up I will get a pause in the movie for about 2 to 3 seconds.  In searching I see that this has to do with spinup and spinup groups were added to prevent this, but I think my disks are not in the same spinup group.  Is there a way to add/force all the disks in the same group?  Thanks.

 

parity device:  pci-0000:00:11.0-scsi-0:0:0:0 host1 (sda) WDC_WD10EACS-00ZJB0_WD-WCASJ1239364

disk1 device: pci-0000:00:11.0-scsi-1:0:0:0 host2 (sdb) WDC_WD10EACS-00ZJB0_WD-WCASJ1236063

disk2 device: pci-0000:00:11.0-scsi-2:0:0:0 host3 (sdc) WDC_WD10EADS-00L5B1_WD-WCAU45615899

disk3 device: pci-0000:00:11.0-scsi-3:0:0:0 host4 (sdd) WDC_WD10EADS-00L5B1_WD-WCAU45888872

[lionelhutz]

On the main web tab click the link for each and every disk and in the spinup group(s): field enter the same name for each disk (I'm sure the name doesn't matter, just make sure it's the same for all). Go to settings tab and make sure that spinup groups is enabled near the bottom. Don't forget to click the apply button each time.

 

Peter

 

[BRiT]

Yes there is. It's written up on how to configure them in the forums when the feature was first introduced: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=4782.0

 

Spinup Groups are assigned by clicking on the individual 'parity', 'disk1', ..., 'cache' links on the webGui Main page.  There is a new configurable field there called "Spinup group(s)".  Here you can enter one or more identifiers separated by spaces, e.g:

 

Spinup group(s): host1

 

When the array is started, the spinup group identifers are examined for each drive, and drives with common identifiers are grouped together for spinup purposes.

 

When there are multiple drives in the same group, they are all spunup/spundown together, and the "Spindown delay" for the group is taken to be the longest of any member in the group.

 

Important: when you start -beta12 for the first time, you will find that the spinup groups are filled in with identifiers.  These identifiers are extracted from the linux /sys/block entries: in the case of IDE drives we group according to IDE host controllers; in the case of SATA/SAS drives, according to 'host' controllers.  To my knowledge this is sufficient to identify hard drives on the same host controllers.  Also, whenever a device is 'assigned' via the Devices page, we also initialize it's Spinup Group with the host controller identifier.  If you do not want to use Spinup Groups, then you must go to each 'disk' page and erase the Spinup group(s) field.  (sorry).

 

Finally, Spinup Groups can be used to force spinup of drives with similar I/O likelyhood.  For example, suppose you have a Music share which spans 2 or more disks.  Further suppose you have playlists that randomly access your music.  If you want to ensure no interruption in music waiting for disks to spinup, you can assign each of the Music share disks to the same group, eg., 'music'.  That way once you start playing music all the music disks on the server will spin up together.  Later when the music stops and the last disk has been idle for "spindown delay" time, all disks will be spundown together.

 

Another Note: Since the Cache drive is not at present controlled by the unRAID driver, it's Spinup Group is ignored.

 

However, are you running Cache_Dirs? That may be all you need to prevent the spun-down disks from spinning up when all you're doing is getting file listings.

 

 

[Joe L.]

Hello. I am running version: 4.5.3, spinup groups is enabled

 

I have 4 drives and they are all connected to 4 of the motherboards 6 sata ports.  When I watch a movie parity disk, disk2, and disk3 spinup.  Disk 1 does not spin up.  If I access SMB shares on the server while watching the movie and disk1 spins up I will get a pause in the movie for about 2 to 3 seconds.  In searching I see that this has to do with spinup and spinup groups were added to prevent this, but I think my disks are not in the same spinup group.  Is there a way to add/force all the disks in the same group?  Thanks.

 

parity device:  pci-0000:00:11.0-scsi-0:0:0:0 host1 (sda) WDC_WD10EACS-00ZJB0_WD-WCASJ1239364

disk1 device: pci-0000:00:11.0-scsi-1:0:0:0 host2 (sdb) WDC_WD10EACS-00ZJB0_WD-WCASJ1236063

disk2 device: pci-0000:00:11.0-scsi-2:0:0:0 host3 (sdc) WDC_WD10EADS-00L5B1_WD-WCAU45615899

disk3 device: pci-0000:00:11.0-scsi-3:0:0:0 host4 (sdd) WDC_WD10EADS-00L5B1_WD-WCAU45888872

Your disks are all in different spinup groups currently, they are not paired as an IDE controller would be.

 

However, your might still have an issue even if all the drives are spinning because of this:

3. An I/O stream via Windows PC freezes when same Windows PC is used to access data on a spundown disk.  This is a Windows problem and can not be fixed by unRAID OS.  From examining SMB connection traces, what I have determined is this: When a Windows PC (client) connects to a Server, it opens a single "SMB Connection".  Over this connection it sends it's requests: lookups, read, writes, etc, no matter which Share is being accessed (that is, all shares on the same server are accessed over a single SMB connection).  Hence, say for example, video is being read from the server and rendered on a Windows PC; if from the same Windows PC you now try to access another share with a spundown drive, Windows will use the same connection, resulting in "freeze" of the video while the I/O reqeust to the spundown drive is being serviced.

 

I have spent a couple of hours looking into this issue on the Windows side and have not found any way to tell Windows to open multiple SMB connections to multiple shares on the same server.

 

Windows thinks it is OK to pause the music while it waits for the results from the server on the other request.  Now, if the drive is spinning it might not be noticeable, or, if you use cache_dirs it might not be noticeable since the information needed for a directory listing can be returned more quickly.

[scottmbritton]

Thanks for the responses.  I now have them all in a spinup group and they all spinup at the same time.  No more pauses when accessing the shares while watching a movie.

[dogmanky]

Thanks for the responses.  I now have them all in a spinup group and they all spinup at the same time.  No more pauses when accessing the shares while watching a movie.

 

How did you set this up to accomplish this?

 

[Joe L.]

Thanks for the responses.  I now have them all in a spinup group and they all spinup at the same time.  No more pauses when accessing the shares while watching a movie.

Interesting, so for you, even though the disk controller seems as if it is not "paired" it actually is.

 

Glad you figured out a solution.

[scottmbritton]

 

How did you set this up to accomplish this?

 

 

If you still need this info..

 

On the main screen.. far left of the screen next to the green status ball.. click on each disk (for example.. parity, disk1, disk2, disk3) and in the Spinup group(s): section put the same name for each disk.

[scottmbritton]

Interesting, so for you, even though the disk controller seems as if it is not "paired" it actually is.

 

Glad you figured out a solution.

 

Yes that appeared to be the case.  Now.. after having it this way for a few days I am not getting the stutters/freeze like I was before, but I am pretty sure my drives are never spinning down.  Before I would only find disk 1 spun down when I checked, but after putting them all in the same group I haven't seen them ever spun down.  Which I guess would make sense since they are in the same group.  I am curious why they will not spin down though.

 

Will mapping a network drive from a windows 7 PC that never shuts down keep the drives up?  I'm disconnecting it tonight to see if that makes a difference.  I may answer my own question.

 

Thanks

[scottmbritton]

Disconnected the Mapped drive on my Win7 PC and changed the spin down to 15 minutes so I didn't have to wait that long to see.  The drives spun down after 15 minutes.  Fun stuff.