Media Pooling

[Mark Anderson 2]

Hi Guys

 

I have a new build with FlexRaid and have been fighting with it for a month now. Verify has never worked and since 10 days ago parity updates fail too. I just read a thread where the developer said its a 32-bit process, so is limited to max no of files (I have 20TB) so you should make multiple RAID's and one pool. That's just ridiculous. What's really anooying is there's no way to edit scheduled jobs: you have to delete then and re-create them. it's a real nightmare. I've just about had it. I'd like to try snapshot raid or another solution for windows, but I'm hosed without pooling support.

 

I was looking at mezzmo and that has a really nice feature that allows you to add multiple locations to a collection. So I can add Disk1\Movies, Disk2\Movies, Disk3\Movies to movies and it will union the results. Any plans to support this? it would give users much more choice of RAID over filesystem solutions if they didn't need storage pooling too. I know pooling makes it easier to use, as it treats the entire pool as one volume and manages distribution, but I'm more than happy to do that manually.

 

Regards

 

mark

 

 

[Koleckai Silvestri 1150]

You can already add multiple storage locations to a Media Folder or collection within the server. Just click on the + button on the right side to add additional locations.

[Koleckai Silvestri 1150]

Here is a screenshot: 

 

Each location can be a different directory on the same drive, a different drive or a path to an entirely different machine. Windows isn't case sensitive either.

Edited January 29, 2014 by Wayne Luke

[ebr 14959]

As Wayne Luke said, you can do this now.  However, it will not truly merge items below the level of the defined media location.

 

IOW you can have multiple locations and all of the items in those locations will be pooled together, BUT we won't merge like-named folders like a true pooling solution will.  So, you can merge movies and TV series from multiple physical locations but it won't recognize that Share1\Breaking Bad and Share2\Breaking Bad are the same TV series and merge those together.

 

So, as long as you keep all of your entities (meaning entire movies or TV Series) in their own physical location and not spread out, then it will work fine.

 

I do favor a true drive pooling solution though for simplicity of management of all tools.  I also use FR but only 12TB right now and using snapshot.

[w84no1 27]

Doesn't Windows 8 have drive pooling built in? I think it is called storage spaces.

[Koleckai Silvestri 1150]

It does. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/storage-spaces-pools

[ebr 14959]

Yeah, and, hopefully, it is working better now with 8.1.  The initial reports I saw on it were a nightmare and I never investigated further.  FR works well for me and gives me at least a little bit of fault protection.

[wraslor 70]

blamo:

 

http://community.mediabrowser.tv/permalinks/12730/windows-8-storage-spaces-warning-to-all

[CBers 6793]

@@Mark Anderson - if you just want drive pooling, try Drive Bender.

 

There's a 30 day trial.

[Danee 57]

Another option is stablebit drivepool: http://stablebit.com

[Mark Anderson 2]

Thanks all.

Wasn't aware of the merging. I can live without the merging of identical folders (as described in post #4). I've never read anything good about storage spaces and I am aware of stablebit product, just a bit wary (probably unwarranted) about using one vendors raid over filesystem and another's pooling. my first priority is data protection. once I've nailed that I'll look at drive pooling, but I can certainly live without it given the current MB3 functionality

 

Thanks again

 

Mark

[eddiesteward 0]

As Wayne Luke said, you can do this now.  However, it will not truly merge items below the level of the defined media location.

 

IOW you can have multiple locations and all of the items in those locations will be pooled together, BUT we won't merge like-named folders like a true pooling solution will.  So, you can merge movies and TV series from multiple physical locations but it won't recognize that Share1\Breaking Bad and Share2\Breaking Bad are the same TV series and merge those together.

 

So, as long as you keep all of your entities (meaning entire movies or TV Series) in their own physical location and not spread out, then it will work fine.

 

I do favor a true drive pooling solution though for simplicity of management of all tools.  I also use FR but only 12TB right now and using snapshot.

 

Hi Ebr,

 

Are there any plans to introduce some form of pooling/merging even it if the merge was only done at the top level of each location.

 

e.g. Movies library

          \Disk1\TV Shows

          \Disk2\TV Shows

 

should present as a single unified TV Shows folder in any of the clients. No merging of like named folders within should be merged.

 

Ed

[ebr 14959]

I don't think we have any current plans for this.  I'm guessing it could get sticky in some instances as we might get some un-wanted results.  But, it may be looked at some time.

[Nate8727 9]

I got rid of FlexRaid months ago.  I had never ending issues with it, despite paying for the software, and I've decided to just use multiple drives instead.

 

It's a bit awkward at first, but once it's setup, it's not bad at all.  I have zero problems with storage anymore.  I also put the Server on the OS X operating system with Windows 7 running on Parallels Desktop.  It's the most stable OS I've ever used.  I NEVER have problems with it.

 

All I need is for the MB3 Server release on OS X, and I'll be Windows free.

[Starkadius 219]

I got rid of FlexRaid months ago.  I had never ending issues with it, despite paying for the software, and I've decided to just use multiple drives instead.

 

It's a bit awkward at first, but once it's setup, it's not bad at all.  I have zero problems with storage anymore.  I also put the Server on the OS X operating system with Windows 7 running on Parallels Desktop.  It's the most stable OS I've ever used.  I NEVER have problems with it.

 

All I need is for the MB3 Server release on OS X, and I'll be Windows free.

 

That is true, OSX is stable. I used to run a hackintosh PC using a gigabyte motherboard because I don't want to pay the apple tax. Using Acronis boot selector I was able to run Windows 7 and Mac OSX side by side, the experience was great. I have to admit the interface is sleek and just feels right. I ran it like this for about 1 year before I just ended up switching to Windows 7 not because I did not like OSX but because I found it limited in things I kept ending up booting into Windows 7 to do. Apple built a beautiful OS and I can understand why anyone would want to use it. I am a believer. Ironically my brother who has been an Apple user all his life hated the look of Windows XP, Vista and 7. When he saw the Surface Pro he switched to it and is now a Windows 8 advocate. I asked him what he liked about it and he said it was the tiles and how simple it is to use but he still doesn't like the desktop though but also he just got bored with the OSX look and felt stale. I actually debated him on that by defending OSX telling him how fluid the OSX UI is over the live tiles because the Windows 8 look tends to be too simplistic in my opinion. Anyway, choice is always good.

 

Btw that Fractal Define case, good taste.

[Mark Anderson 2]

Doesn't Windows 8 have drive pooling built in? I think it is called storage spaces.

I looked into it, but wouldn't touch it with a barge pole. It requires a proprietary format that can't be mounted on a regular desktop in urgent cases. i would never use a pooling system where you can't native access the data on any PC/linux PC

[Nate8727 9]

That is true, OSX is stable. I used to run a hackintosh PC using a gigabyte motherboard because I don't want to pay the apple tax. Using Acronis boot selector I was able to run Windows 7 and Mac OSX side by side, the experience was great. I have to admit the interface is sleek and just feels right. I ran it like this for about 1 year before I just ended up switching to Windows 7 not because I did not like OSX but because I found it limited in things I kept ending up booting into Windows 7 to do. Apple built a beautiful OS and I can understand why anyone would want to use it. I am a believer. Ironically my brother who has been an Apple user all his life hated the look of Windows XP, Vista and 7. When he saw the Surface Pro he switched to it and is now a Windows 8 advocate. I asked him what he liked about it and he said it was the tiles and how simple it is to use but he still doesn't like the desktop though but also he just got bored with the OSX look and felt stale. I actually debated him on that by defending OSX telling him how fluid the OSX UI is over the live tiles because the Windows 8 look tends to be too simplistic in my opinion. Anyway, choice is always good.

 

Btw that Fractal Define case, good taste.

Thanks, the airflow in it is excellent.  I'm also running a hackintosh.  The sad part is, I used to get blue screens and restarts from software all of the time with Windows 7.  Since I put OS X on it, I've had zero restarts in 9 months.  It has never been a hardware issue.  Even sadder is that PCs are built for Windows, yet Apple's OS runs on them like a Ferrari.

[Aphid 212]

I looked into it, but wouldn't touch it with a barge pole. It requires a proprietary format that can't be mounted on a regular desktop in urgent cases. i would never use a pooling system where you can't native access the data on any PC/linux PC

 

It uses ReFS, which is the replacement file system for NTFS. It is vastly superior to NTFS and FAT (and similar to ZFS), but probably wont be until Windows 9 (or later) before they switch over to using it by default. You can drop the drive into any Windows 8/8.1/Server 2012 PC and read the data from it.

 

I'm using stablebit, which has the advantage of storing its data as standard hidden files on an NTFS partition, so just about anything can read them.

[Koleckai Silvestri 1150]

Thanks, the airflow in it is excellent.  I'm also running a hackintosh.  The sad part is, I used to get blue screens and restarts from software all of the time with Windows 7.  Since I put OS X on it, I've had zero restarts in 9 months.  It has never been a hardware issue.  Even sadder is that PCs are built for Windows, yet Apple's OS runs on them like a Ferrari.

 

Sounds like you had a bad device driver. I've been using Windows 7 since it was released and have never seen a blue screen. I understand they do happen but they are most often caused by bad drivers or conflicts. They happen more often on 32-bit Windows than 64-bit Windows. I only reboot my machine once a week if necessary after any updates are applied.