[mythtv-users] Storage best practices in 2017

[Mark]

Sent from my T-Mobile 4G LTE Device

-------- Original message --------
From: Andre MythTV <mythtv-list at dinkum.org.uk> 
Date: 3/22/17  1:37 PM  (GMT-05:00) 
To: Discussion about MythTV <mythtv-users at mythtv.org> 
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Storage best practices in 2017 


> On 22 Mar 2017, at 16:50, Mark <fairlane at springcom.com> wrote:
> 
> I'm getting ready to rebuild my main backend system, which has served me faithfully for the last 5 years with near no downtime, functioning as a mythtv backend, NAS server, zoneminder, asterisk and a couple other functions.  I do all this to keep powered computers to a minimum and save a bit on power costs. 
> 
> The storage as it is now consists of 4 1TB western digital drives in Raid 5 with LVM on top for mythtv storage of recordings and video/ripped dvds.  I also have 2 1TB drives in Raid 1 for critical stuff i don't want to lose and don't need the striping for performance.  
> 
> I've decided the Raid 5 / LVM setup is too complex for what it is, and storage groups didn't exist when i originally built this rig.  
> 
> I just picked up 2 4TB WDRed drives on the newegg hump day sale.  
> 
> Looking for suggestions on where to go from here, with the following assumptions:  Video recordings/dvd rips i want to have some sort of protection from a drive fail.  Recordings i don't care as much.  

I mount all my drives separately in /var/lib/mythtv/RA, RB, RC, RD etc.

Recordings drives are formatted XFS and AV-GP or similar surveillance firmware drives they are just added to the group, no protection.

Videos drives are formatted EXT4 with 
mkfs.ext4 -T largefile4 -m 0 -L Movies1 /dev/sd?

On an 8TB drive I get an extra 100GB with Largefile4 and I can’t remember how much -m 0 gained me but it was several movies worth.

I then run snapraid on the video’s drives with a parity disk, I considered ZFS or RAID but as soon as you RAID the disks together you need substantial mirror or parity drives otherwise the RAID is more fragile than individual disks, also all the disks rattle on any access, quite noisy for a home system! I think snapraid gives me more appropriate protection than RAID 1,5 or 6. It’s run manually when you add files and file recovery is manual too. It’s recovered a large directory of movies that I deleted with a fumbled rm -rf a RAID array can’t do that. You can also spin down the drives and only spin up the one you need to access. The snapraid scrub will tell you if you have bit rot.

 I plan to move my EXT4 drives to BTRFS when it stabilises, probably it’s stable enough for single drive use now. I used to use XFS for the Videos too but I have a media player that can’t cope with 64 bit inodes over NFS so a switch to EXT4 fixed that.

Andre


Wow.  I had never heard of snapraid until just now.  It seems like a great fit.  I'll read some more on it.  Thanks!

> 
> What's the current thought on best practices for storage?  I had looked at ZFS for preventing bit-rot.  Not opposed to Raid still, but probably not that interested in the LVM combo anymore.
> 
> Any thoughts?
> Sent from my T-Mobile 4G LTE Device
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