My take on the state of DrivePool right now

Alex · September 2011

As of right now, we have M3 out for a while, I think that the basic functions that we've been testing in M1 and M2 are mostly working as expected.

There are still some sporadic issues with moving folders. I think the ultimate solution for this would be to implement transactional NTFS. This would mean that even if you pull the plug during a folder move, everything would go back to the way that it was the next time you boot up. It's a bit of work, but may need to be done.

There are multiple open issues with the newly introduced client computer backups feature. Service startup issues are cropping up in the latest builds related to this. Issues were expected, it's a large leap to put backups on the pool, that's why this feature was held back until now. We have to get through these, it's really the #1 priority for DrivePool right now.

Of course there are other smaller issues too, but those are the two major problems on my mind right now because they have the potential to affect many people.

Thanks everyone for reporting issues. It moves testing along and gives me a better picture of what works and what doesn't.

In other news, the first BETAs of Scanner 2.0 are coming any day now (that's why I was away from the forums for a bit). It will run on the WHS 2011 family of OSes.

After Scanner 2.0 BETA is released, we'll wrap up any remaining issues with DrivePool M3 and move on to M4.

Danee · September 2011

Thanks for informing us, keep up the good work!

Cheers,

Danee

JohnBraham · September 2011

Yes thanks for the update, I just started loading up my newly build 2011 server with data from the v1 server, whats the current picture on performance, is there any know hit on file read time?

sean10780 · September 2011

Thanks for the update Alex, keep up the good work.

Alex · September 2011

@JohnBrahm: Yes, M3 will have a hit on performance. The kind of hit will depend on how the application access the pool and the performance of the CPU.

For example, applications using overlapping I/O with large buffers on a server with a fast CPU should not suffer much of a hit. However, a typical app that just opens a file and reads sequentially with a smaller buffer will suffer a large hit.

This is expected in M3. M4 will aim to speed this up dramatically.

JazJon · September 2011

You're making great progress and moving along quite nicely as usual.

I'm happy to continue reporting drivepool bugs and I'm looking forward to testing Scanner soon as well.

SDWolf · September 2011

I found a workaround for the backup service startup issues. I set the startup for the "Client Computer Backup Provider" and "Client Computer Backup" services to Delayed Start. This helps ensure that DrivePool (startup is set to Automatic) is up and running before the backup services try to load.

I've done the same for other services that depend on the pool (various My Movies services), and haven't had a startup issue since.

Alex · September 2011

@sdwolf Hopefully this won't continue for much longer. This will be addressed in the next update, or the one after.

But yes, that should work for now.

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My take on the state of DrivePool right now

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