Not really hardware but

[mediacowboy 438]

Sorta late here but I've never heard of Drive Bender before.

 

I have JBOD and think I should make it into something a little easier to manage but then again..

What OS are you using? If windows drive bender and drivepool are both good options. I started with drive bender when I wanted one 4 tb drive out of 2-2 tb drives. Worked flawless for me for years. There are several users on this forum that ran one or the other. I loved drive bender for the fact I could change drives out and it didn't care size or brand. I also loved the file balancing so it didn't fill any drive up more then the others. It has other features that I didn't use like file back(think raid 1) Edited June 12, 2018 by mediacowboy

[CBers 6771]

Sorta late here but I've never heard of Drive Bender before.

 

I have JBOD and think I should make it into something a little easier to manage but then again..

Like @@mediacowboy, I have used DriveBender since it's inception in 2011.

 

It's excellent in pooling existing drives together to make a larger virtual drive.

 

Take a look here: https://www.division-m.com/drivebender/

 

Come visit us at the DriveBender forums: https://community.division-m.com

 

They also have other products you might be interested in, such as cloud pools.

 

StableBit's DrivePool is an alternative.

[BAlGaInTl 279]

This intrigues me.

 

I may play around with a similar setup.

 

I'm using OMV right now with standard software RAID drives and shares.  I run a mix of plugins for OMV and Docker containers.  Seems like it could be a good idea to just run everything in Docker containers.  I'd like to figure out nginx too so I can forward some standard ports to make accessing my applications easier/better.

[Sammy 735]

Well I bit the bullet and moved my server over to Ubuntu. I have also setup VAAPI with my i5. I can't believe how much of difference switching from windows to Ubuntu has made. Live TV almost starts instantly with no buffering issue. All the apps are snappier and smoother. Listed below is what I have installed. If anyone has any questions about anything I am using please let me know.

 

OS:

  - Ubuntu 18.04

 

Software:

  - MergerFS

  - Cockpit

  - Docker & Docker Compose

 

Docker Containers:

  - Deluge

  - Emby

  - Emby-Beta

  - Home-Assistant

  - Lidarr

  - Nginx

  - Portaniner

  - Radarr

  - SabNZBd

  - Sonarr

 

 

A nice guide to setting this up would be FANTASTIC!

 

BTW, why SabNZBd over NZBget? Just wondering.

[mediacowboy 438]

A nice guide to setting this up would be FANTASTIC!

 

BTW, why SabNZBd over NZBget? Just wondering.

I will try to get one up. Most of this is straight forward.

 

I have used SabNZBd since I started and just haven't used anything else.

[Guest asrequested]

What was the drivepool conversion, like? Did it just read the existing pool, or did you have to shuffle around and rebuild? This does interest me, but the rolling back of the LSI firmware, and deivepooling has me wondering. I have three pools on one machine, and two LSI controllers.

[Sammy 735]

I will try to get one up. Most of this is straight forward.

 

I have used SabNZBd since I started and just haven't used anything else.

Cool!!

 

I used Sab but switched to Get when I was having issues with Sab. I find Get's interface much better but that is just me.

[mediacowboy 438]

What was the drivepool conversion, like? Did it just read the existing pool, or did you have to shuffle around and rebuild? This does interest me, but the rolling back of the LSI firmware, and deivepooling has me wondering. I have three pools on one machine, and two LSI controllers.

I completely started over. Moved all my stuff to extra hard drives and wiped them. Reformatted my drive to ext4. Created the pool using mergerfs. Then moved everything back to the new pool.

 

I have the files I used to roll firmware back on a USB I can zip and send you.

Edited June 12, 2018 by mediacowboy

[Guest asrequested]

Well, I already have a complete backup of all of my media, so I could just rely on that. I'm assuming you can make multiple pools?

[Guest asrequested]

I'd be very interested in your guide. I've never dabbled with Linux, but have wanted to for a long time. It seems you've got all the bases covered, so the guide would great!

[Guest asrequested]

I'm assuming that networking between Linux and Windows is stable and not a nightmare to configure?

[Sammy 735]

I have some 20Tb on JOBD and no extra drives. Not even sure where to begin! I suppose I need a few 8TB drives and I can dock them on my USB3 drive dock and start copying? Then as more drives get copied I can wipe them and then start building an array with a couple other 8TB drives? I'm behind the times here and have not switched to RAID or anything. I suppose I never had the time and don't worry much about this data as it is replaceable. In fact, I recycle now that I'm full up on space for more drives and the drives are pretty darn full.

 

I'm mainly intrigued by faster LiveTV load times!! I can take a full 30 seconds to get from the home screen on my ShieldTV to streaming a live channel in Emby which is a long time and even changing channels takes a good 10 seconds. How has WMC been able to do this so much quicker, even HDHR app is very snappy but Emby? Not so much. I mean it is basically the only app that does it on all devices but it does take a lot of time to load a stream too.

[CBers 6771]

Hopefully not software raid @@Sammy

 

Hardware raid or nothing should be the maxim for home use.

 

Drive pooling is a better alternative than software raid.

 

Just my opinion

[Sammy 735]

So drives and controllers, eh @@CBers?

[Guest asrequested]

My load times are pretty quick, especially on my HTPC. I'm more interested in the stability that Linux, provides. I also have concerns about how well it supports my NICs. Mellanox Connect-X SFP+. I imagine they are supported. I may have to throw a VM on my server machine, and see. It might be fun to learn some of this stuff.

[mediacowboy 438]

So drives and controllers, eh @@CBers?

I used/use 8 tb Seagate iron wolf with an lsi-9211-8i flashed to it mode. For windows you have to have firmware 19 or 20. When I switched to Linux I had to roll back to firm 16.

 

I have also used:

2 tb Seagate desktop

4 tb Seagate desktop

8 tb Seagate archive

IO Crest 4 Port SATA III PCI-e 2.0

On board sata

 

All have worked with drive bender

Edited June 12, 2018 by mediacowboy

[Guest asrequested]

What was the reason for needing to roll back the firmware on the controller cards? OS or pooling software?

[mediacowboy 438]

OS. From what I could tell Linux does not support the latest driver.

[Guest asrequested]

That may negate my using a VM on my server box. Maybe I'll run it on my backup.

 

Thanks for the info.

[mediacowboy 438]

*WARNING - I am new to this and there are probably better ways of dealing with all this. - WARNING*

 

Okay guy's I know I said I would write a how to but then I remembered I used two sites online to do most the work. I will post them below and let you read them and then answer any question's. There is going to be some duplication between the two but it will help. I am also going to post a Ubuntu 18.04 Guide as things are different from 16.04.

 

https://www.howtoforge.com/tutorial/ubuntu-lts-minimal-server/

 

 

https://blog.linuxserver.io/2017/06/24/the-perfect-media-server-2017/

https://www.smarthomebeginner.com/docker-home-media-server-2018-basic/

 

Below is attached is my docker compose file, a text file with some host commands, and my samba config with drive config example.

 

Please let me know if you have any questions.

 

 

Issues with library monitoring failing : https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/9754-docker/?p=580431

 

Vaapi transcoding verification help:

https://r.tapatalk.com/shareLink?url=https%3A%2F%2Femby%2Emedia%2Fcommunity%2Findex%2Ephp%3F%2Ftopic%2F48588-Confirmed-Linux-Intel-Quick-Sync-Transcoding&share_tid=48588&share_fid=77624&share_type=t"

Server Setup.zip

Edited June 13, 2018 by mediacowboy

[Guest asrequested]

Thanks. It's a place from which to build...should I choose to

[mediacowboy 438]

I have loved the past three weeks. If you download the zip file and look at the yml file in notepad ++ you will see everything I am running. I have even found a handbrake docker I want to install and try.

[mediacowboy 438]

Something I did before biting the bullet was on my old server, now gaming rig, was create a vm using virtualbox. Installed Ubuntu 16.04 as it was the most current at the time and played with it that way. Once I was happy with it I redid my server and learned the mergerfs and vaapi setup.

[Guest asrequested]

Something I did before biting the bullet was on my old server, now gaming rig, was create a vm using virtualbox. Installed Ubuntu 16.04 as it was the most current at the time and played with it that way. Once I was happy with it I redid my server and learned the mergerfs and vaapi setup.

 

That's what I've been thinking about doing. I'll have to run it on my backup machine, but it has enough resources to do it. I have others things I'm working on, right now, but I would like to give it a whirl, at some point.

Edited June 13, 2018 by Doofus

[BAlGaInTl 279]

Something I did before biting the bullet was on my old server, now gaming rig, was create a vm using virtualbox. Installed Ubuntu 16.04 as it was the most current at the time and played with it that way. Once I was happy with it I redid my server and learned the mergerfs and vaapi setup.

 

Are you doing anything for redundancy?

 

I don't really care about it for my media files.  I have an easily readable backup.  But I also have shares for user files on my home server that keep all of our documents, photos, etc.  Stuff I really don't want to lose.  I back those up as well, but would really like a failsafe for a failed drive on the server as well.