Unraid shares setup

[Hammoud.MA]

I am done with building the server, I have 4 drives (1 is the parity drive), 2 nvme ssds. I already cleared the drives and setup the array. 

The bit I am confused about is the shares. (I am using unraid 6.12.6)

I have watched some videos from spaceinvador one on setting up shares, it all made sense but the videos were using unraid 6.9 which had a different set of cache policies.
 

My use case is going to be: Movies and series, archive data (mostly writes, wont touch a lot) I will be using plex media server for the movies and series, I also want to use plex to backup my photos and videos off my phone. And will probably have 1 VM running (not a lot of the time)

- I will be downloading (legally of course) movies and series using some p2p connection. It makes sense to me that the download will start on the SSD and mover will move to the right directory. From spaceinvadorone video, I planning on setting one drive for movies and one for series. I am really lost on how to set this up, if i am using radar or ronar would these be connected to a download share? or should I have 1 share for movies and 1 for series? 

 

- Regarding plex, I understand that plex will need to store some metadata somewhere, and it can grow big, should this be on an SSD? or the array. Should be on the 3rd drive in the array (assuming 1 is movies and 1 is series) But also what about the photos and videos backup? I wont these to be on the array for sure.

- For data in general, I am guessing that using the array immediately would be enough (opinions appreciated)

I would appreciate any help i can get on this. I got some great hardware and i want to make the most of it, and not risk my data (the data i care about most is the photos,videos and a small 1tb archive)

[ChrisLoudon]

26 minutes ago, Hammoud.MA said:

I would appreciate any help i can get on this.

Hi buddy,

 

So, my Unraid server (6.12.3) used an 8TB and 6TB for double parity and mish-mash of 4TBs all the way down to 1TB drives for the main storage pool then a 4TB SSD for the cache.

 

Mine is predominately for Plex with most of the files being written to the array relatively large so I have everything set to Cache 1st. See snipping attached for what I have my shares setup.

 

BTW, I'm no expert so might have this totally wrong but I don't have any major issue.

 

I do have a strange problem when moving files from my NZBget 'complete' folder to one of my media folders. If its a TV episode and not a huge file, the file moves pretty much instantly, if however its a whopper like a 70Gig file then moving it can take a while.

[voyager_]

Please kind in mind I'm not at home so I can't see the exact naming and structure of things. If I get a chance I try and correct somethings I missed or called wrong later this evening.

 

For the difference in Unraid versions some things did change but the concept is the same.

 

As Far as my media goes I Have a Share called "media" within it I have folders like Tv Shows, Music, Movies, Etc... If you go to the settings/properties of this share I have it set to use the cache (prefer) and all disks included, none excluded. This way when I copy files to one of those directories under the "media" share it will go to the cache then the mover will later transfer it to the array.

 

For all of your legally downloaded content, I probably can't be of too much help here, I haven't used radar or sonar. The way I handle mine is through a vm and the legal content is saved to an unassigned drive. After the downloads are done I fix any labeling issues so they are formatted the way I want and any junk is removed then I copy it to the correct directory under my media share.

 

Plex Metadata - (sorry trying to remember this from memory) There is a directory that unraid uses as default for dockers I set this directory to only use the cache drives. This is where you will change the included and excluded drives under the share settings to lock thee directory to the cache drives, and disable the mover. I want to say it's called appdata. This way it will not put any of the dockers on the array. With plex this is a big help as the library goes. You don't necessarily need to lock this to the cache you can point it towards an unassigned drive. I stick mine on the cache drives since they are there and I have a second as a backup. 

 

For general data I use the array for everything, I will just create shares for certain things like applications I want to keep, backup targets from other computers, documents, you get the idea. The share that is setup for backups I don't have using the cache, the backup is slower but otherwise it would just fill the cache. I run those staggered and at odd hours anyways so it doesn't matter.

 

For your most important data like photos and documents always make sure to have it backed up somewhere else. Whether it's something like google drive or backblaze. Things happen and some stuff can't be recovered no matter how could your setup is. I have a second server that mirrors my primary and I still sync certain things to the cloud to be safe.

[Hammoud.MA]

On 2/15/2024 at 7:53 PM, voyager_ said:

Please kind in mind I'm not at home so I can't see the exact naming and structure of things. If I get a chance I try and correct somethings I missed or called wrong later this evening.

 

For the difference in Unraid versions some things did change but the concept is the same.

 

As Far as my media goes I Have a Share called "media" within it I have folders like Tv Shows, Music, Movies, Etc... If you go to the settings/properties of this share I have it set to use the cache (prefer) and all disks included, none excluded. This way when I copy files to one of those directories under the "media" share it will go to the cache then the mover will later transfer it to the array.

 

For all of your legally downloaded content, I probably can't be of too much help here, I haven't used radar or sonar. The way I handle mine is through a vm and the legal content is saved to an unassigned drive. After the downloads are done I fix any labeling issues so they are formatted the way I want and any junk is removed then I copy it to the correct directory under my media share.

 

Plex Metadata - (sorry trying to remember this from memory) There is a directory that unraid uses as default for dockers I set this directory to only use the cache drives. This is where you will change the included and excluded drives under the share settings to lock thee directory to the cache drives, and disable the mover. I want to say it's called appdata. This way it will not put any of the dockers on the array. With plex this is a big help as the library goes. You don't necessarily need to lock this to the cache you can point it towards an unassigned drive. I stick mine on the cache drives since they are there and I have a second as a backup. 

 

For general data I use the array for everything, I will just create shares for certain things like applications I want to keep, backup targets from other computers, documents, you get the idea. The share that is setup for backups I don't have using the cache, the backup is slower but otherwise it would just fill the cache. I run those staggered and at odd hours anyways so it doesn't matter.

 

For your most important data like photos and documents always make sure to have it backed up somewhere else. Whether it's something like google drive or backblaze. Things happen and some stuff can't be recovered no matter how could your setup is. I have a second server that mirrors my primary and I still sync certain things to the cloud to be safe.

I actually ended up doing a setup similar to yours.

I have the shares setup to array directly (movies and series) and have a Windows VM to manage the content I am acquiring. 

Do you have any advice to make using the VM a little better? I am using NoVNC from unraid it is a bit sluggish. Also I added the shares as network directories to the VM. And when I am done cleaning up the media I will move them to the shares. I have noticed that the copy speed is a bit slow. 

I am using TinyMediaManager to cleanup the data. It is working fine, but also a bit sluggish

[voyager_]

On 2/17/2024 at 1:54 PM, Hammoud.MA said:

I actually ended up doing a setup similar to yours.

I have the shares setup to array directly (movies and series) and have a Windows VM to manage the content I am acquiring. 

Do you have any advice to make using the VM a little better? I am using NoVNC from unraid it is a bit sluggish. Also I added the shares as network directories to the VM. And when I am done cleaning up the media I will move them to the shares. I have noticed that the copy speed is a bit slow. 

I am using TinyMediaManager to cleanup the data. It is working fine, but also a bit sluggish

The copy speed when writing to the array will be slower because it has to calculate parity while writing the data. If you have the cache enabled then it will write fast to the cache then later move to the array. I will disable the cache for those directories for the first setup if I know I will be dumping more data then the cache can handle.

 

As far as speeding up the vm what sort of hardware is allocated towards it (cpu cores/ram)? The default vnc that you can access through unraid works but i've never been a fan. I use it for initial setup and if I have an issue. Otherwise I just use team viewer, this way I can also access it from my phone throughout the day if I want to.