I have 5 5tb drives i want to start my array with.  I am still waiting to receive my 10tb for parity drive and my ssd (cache) i will be using is coming tomorrow.  Im going with the 10tb because i got a real good deal on it and i plan on as i expand my system to just buy larger drives (either 8tb or 10tb).  The question i have is can i start to build my array without the cache drive and parity drive.  Then install the drives once i receive them.

Yes 

 

But, if you enable dockers or VMs before you install cache you will have a little work to do to get those moved to cache. Not a big deal just something to work through.

1 hour ago, trurl said:

Yes 

 

But, if you enable dockers or VMs before you install cache you will have a little work to do to get those moved to cache. Not a big deal just something to work through.

Okay, I'm having this exact issue. I installed Plex, then a cache drive. I've noticed that the cache is really unused. What steps need to happen to force plex to use the cache?

By default, there are 3 user shares used by Dockers and VMs. These are appdata, domains, and system; appdata is the working storage for your dockers. domains is where your VMs are stored, and system is where docker and libvirt images are stored.

 

These shares are set as cache-prefer by default. So, they will be stored on cache if cache has space, and moved from array to cache when cache has space. You want these shares on cache so your Docker and VM performance will not be affected by the slower parity writes, and so your Dockers and VMs won't keep array disks spinning, since these files are typically in use.

 

But, mover can't move open files. So, to get these moved to cache, you have to disable Docker (Settings - Docker) and VM (Settings - VM Manager) services, then run mover.

 

After you get them all moved to cache you might consider setting all these shares to cache-only if you are sure you won't fill cache (Settings - Global Share Settings - Cache Settings - Min. free space).

 

You can see how much of each disk each user share is using at Shares - User Shares and doing Compute... for a share, or the Compute All button.

2 hours ago, trurl said:

After you get them all moved to cache you might consider setting all these shares to cache-only if you are sure you won't fill cache (Settings - Global Share Settings - Cache Settings - Min. free space).

Just to confirm, by "all these shares" you mean appdata, domains, and system? Will a CA Backup make copies of files even if they are set to cache-only?

 

Thanks for that information, very clear. And that Compute All was a hidden gem -- wondered where that info was!

16 hours ago, trurl said:

Yes 

 

But, if you enable dockers or VMs before you install cache you will have a little work to do to get those moved to cache. Not a big deal just something to work through.

Thanks for the quick reply.  I wont be enabling any dockers or VM's until i bring all my data back onto the server.

12 hours ago, trurl said:

By default, there are 3 user shares used by Dockers and VMs. These are appdata, domains, and system; appdata is the working storage for your dockers. domains is where your VMs are stored, and system is where docker and libvirt images are stored.

 

These shares are set as cache-prefer by default. So, they will be stored on cache if cache has space, and moved from array to cache when cache has space. You want these shares on cache so your Docker and VM performance will not be affected by the slower parity writes, and so your Dockers and VMs won't keep array disks spinning, since these files are typically in use.

 

But, mover can't move open files. So, to get these moved to cache, you have to disable Docker (Settings - Docker) and VM (Settings - VM Manager) services, then run mover.

 

After you get them all moved to cache you might consider setting all these shares to cache-only if you are sure you won't fill cache (Settings - Global Share Settings - Cache Settings - Min. free space).

 

You can see how much of each disk each user share is using at Shares - User Shares and doing Compute... for a share, or the Compute All button.

This is alot of great info.  I will make sure of that once i start using them.

10 hours ago, Nepherim said:

Just to confirm, by "all these shares" you mean appdata, domains, and system? Will a CA Backup make copies of files even if they are set to cache-only?

yes and yes