FlexRaid Questions

[toricred]

I'm getting ready to build a new server. I'm currently using WHS, but am considering going back to XP Pro for my server. The only significant thing I like about WHS is the ability to have the drive pool make all my storage drives look like one big share. From research it looks like FlexRaid on XP might be an option to keep that ability. For those of you using it would this work for me? Since I only use extenders it doesn't matter whether it's available via UNC or drive letter. I also don't really care about parity so it would be nice if I didn't have to use it.

[loomdog32]

Are you looking to have 1 large drive from all your "protected" drives? If so, then flexRADI (as of 1.3) does not support this. There have been talks of this type of support (and it may exist now - I donno as my setup works for me and thats what matters, so I havent been back to check on updates)........

in a nutshell, it works like this:

FlexRAID is a snapshot RAID, meaning that is makes a backup (which you have to schedule - its does not do this on its own). When you experience a failure or want to restore (which you again have to schedule) you get what ever was last backuped. Also, if you eperience a drive failure, you will not have access to the lost data until the drive is replaced and the "restore" process is ran.

I do weekly backups. I have had drive failures (thanx Seagate and the crappy firmware bugs) while using this. I have not lost any data while using this. YMMV. If you are looking for a more typlical RAID-esk setup, I would suggest looking at unRAID. The main downfall here, IMO, Is that it requires a separate box (which is why I no longer use it)...

[paulbeers]

I used to use FlexRaid until I decided to go with a true Raid setup. Before flexraid, I used FreeNas (but didn't like the need for a second box). I really liked the idea of FlexRaid and thankfully never had to use it to restore lost data. Like Loomdog, I had it set for weekly backups. The ONLY thing I stored on my FlexRaid was DVD backups and since I was only adding a few a week, I figured the worst thing that could happen was that I lose a half dozen DVD's. It is not a good choice for mission critical stuff that changes regularly (but I think we all know that). How FlexRaid works (or at least worked, when I used it up until about a year ago), is that it takes all your independent hard drives and uses one as the Snapshot. It is much like RAID 4 in that the parity calculations are all done on an individual disk (rather than RAID 5 where the parity bits are stored across all the disks). The difference is that each drive still maintains its own letter. For example, when I was using FlexRaid, I had five 500GB drives. Each one was lettered F:, G:, H:, I:, J:. The first 4 houses my DVD collection and the J drive housed the parity bit calculation when it was done. Sage doesn't care though whether you have 1 large drive or 4 little drives when it comes to importing as it all just ends up in the Media Center. The other nice thing about FlexRaid, is that you are tied to any particular RAID Controller, so if you have a failure, you won't lose all your data. With that said, the downside is that I felt like development of FlexRaid was rather slow and I felt like I had to babysit it a lot (again this was over a year ago that I stopped using it, so I can't say how the current state of FlexRaid is now).

These are just my thoughts.....

[toricred]

OK, so it sounds like FlexRaid isn't right for me. I really don't want the different drive letters and I'm not that worried about data loss. I'm looking into spanned volumes using XP's built-in dynamic disks. Anybody with opinions on that?

[Fuzzy]

Any particular reason you want them all combined? I find that sage performs MUCH better with individual drives, than it does using a spanned volume. (this is because with a spanned volume, you are almost always writing to just a single drive at a time). Sage combined multiple drives fine out of the box, and will distribute the load relatively evenly between them through normal use.

I'm not sure on the reliability of window's spanned volumes, either. If one drive fails, my guess is you'd be at risk of losing everything... as opposed to separate drives resulting in losing only what was on that drive.

[PLUCKYHD]

Can't speak for the original poster but I like a single volume as it allows me to see every dvd I have under on folder without having to span multiple drive when looking for a dvd / blu ray. That is the reason I use WHS mainly. Although WHS is becoming PIA to me and I will probably for to NAS soon.

[Fuzzy]

I browse my library from within sage, so i never see WHAT folder something is in... Isn't that the POINT of sage?

[barney B.A.]

I agree with Fuzzy, Let Sage manage your hard drives

[toricred]

I've got 8 drives right now and will be expanding to 10+ soon. If I run a PC client that means either mapping 10+ drives or creating and managing 10+ shares. I just don't want the hassle. I've also run with Sage managing the drives in the past and ran into issues with specific drives being overtaxed for my 10 tuners, 4 SAV processes and 5 extenders all trying to access the same drive at once. It shouldn't happen, but it does on occasion. I didn't think it was a huge deal until I used WHS and saw how nice it can be to have one share to place things. With my new system I am trying to avoid using WHS because of some drivers that don't work as well on WHS as they do on XP, but I'd still like to have one share with all the storage behind it.

[blade]

Originally Posted by toricred

I've also run with Sage managing the drives in the past and ran into issues with specific drives being overtaxed for my 10 tuners, 4 SAV processes and 5 extenders all trying to access the same drive at once.

Just wanted to point out that in v7 Sage has apparently improved things quite a bit in that area since 64k formatting is no longer necessary. Also there is a setting to optimize for space (the old way) or performance. With performance simultaneous recordings are written to multiple recording folders if space is available.

Anyway I'm not trying to get into the debate, just wanted to point that out for anyone who may have missed it.

[toricred]

I knew about the 64k thing being removed, although I tried it with default settings and it didn't work out that well, but I didn't see where it could be optimized for performance. Where is that setting?

[jphipps]

I go even further, I have 3 separate file servers, with multiple raid 5 volumes in each... I don't see any issues viewing them from within sage. I use genre folders, so I have a Comedy folder on each share, and they all show up as one folder in sage.

Plus if I ever have a server failure or some failure that makes the raid drive unavailable, I only loose those few shares and not all the data..

Also, If I need to do some work on a server or raid drive, I can migrate the data to another drive or server..

Thanks,
Jeff

[blade]

Originally Posted by toricred

I knew about the 64k thing being removed, although I tried it with default settings and it didn't work out that well, but I didn't see where it could be optimized for performance. Where is that setting?

In Detailed Setup under the General section. It's called "Video Recording Path Optimization Style".

[toricred]

Apparently that only shows when you have 2 or more drives so that's why I hadn't seen it. I'm going to try that on my new server at least for a little while when I get it up.

[electronics4lif]

Originally Posted by blade

In Detailed Setup under the General section. It's called "Video Recording Path Optimization Style".

I had missed this new feature also. If it works...