Why pool cache drives?

[nextgenpotato]

Let me preface my complaint by saying that I really like unraid and it perfectly fits into my use cases (personal/home use).

I never really like the idea of raid, splitting (or duplicating) you data over different disks, it just makes me uncomfortable.

I like the control and and flexibility unraid gives me. For example I don't split my shares over disks. I like to know which disk has what data. Since I have a small setup setup, this works for me.

 

I wasn't really using my cache drive for cache purposes either, I don't necessarily need the extra speed most of the time. But I have my system and appdata on it as that's the default option and it makes sense.

I use my cache drive (SSD) mainly to store disk images for my VMs. As you know it has great impact if you use an ssd as the system disk for an OS.

 

Now the other day I wanted to add a second SSD as a second cache drive, only to find out that I will have to reformat my current cache as btrfs and pool it with the new drive in a raid configuration.

I have no use for this. I just wanted to add a second drive for my VMs, nothing else. Why isn't this an option? Or maybe an option to auto mount a disk without being part of the array or cache pool.

[itimpi]

If you install the Unassigned Devices plugin it provides facilities for managing drives that are not part of the array.   Many unRAID users install their VMs on SSDs managed by the UD plugin.

[pwm]

Remember that if you use a single SSD for your VM, then you have no redundancy. So you better make sure you have a good backup policy where you regularly take a copy of the VM.

[nextgenpotato]

Thanks! I just found out about this plugin.

I will check it out, it looks like it would work for me.

I wish this was an official feature though.

 

Edit.

I really don't think I need redundancy for my cache drive or VM disks. So I'm ok with not having any redundancy for them. 

If necessary I take manual backups from time to time.

[pwm]

Just now, nextgenpotato said:

Thanks! I just found out about this plugin.

I will check it out, it looks like it would work for me.

I wish this was an official feature though.

 

It's just about 2mm from being an official feature.

[nextgenpotato]

Great! thanks.