Planning to rebuild my 20TB WHS Flexraid server: Information requested. - Page 21

Thank you for the offer. I dont have any other mobo s right now. Will probably have access to one in a month or so. Will try then i guess. The mobo is a nforce 680 sli. So it is rated to run at 8x/8x. No onboard graphics. So I have to run one pci-e with my gpu. Even then it must run both at 8x i think. Ill try in some other mobo and then decide. Thank you for the help guys.

I found my M1015 deal using Google. Someone on a forum was selling one for $75 shipped (no bracket).

I spent more time trying to find two proper screws to attach the bracket (didn't come with screws) than I spent flashing the thing to IT mode.

Instead of starting a new thread I'll just ask here...

Out of all the documentation for FlexRAID one thing that seems to be referred to but not documented is what a typical Schedule looks like.

I hear Update every night and then Verify and Validate seems all over the place (from once a week to once a month).

I set mine up to:
Update every night
Verify every week
Validate once a month
Quick Validate once a month (two weeks out of the monthly Validate)

It should be like this

Update every night
Validate once a week
Verify once a month

Scheduling quick validate isn't necessary because an update task will do that.

I remember a flexraid forum post where brahim commented on a suggested schedule, but for the life of me I can't find it

It was pretty similar to yours, except verify was every month and validate was once per week

I may have had my Verify and Validate switched around, you can't seem to view or edit your scheduled jobs, only see the next run time.

I had my first Verify run last night and it failed. I have an idea why, but won't be able to dig into it until I get home. Just wanting to make sure I have things scheduled correctly so I don't keep getting failures.

Like I mentioned, the documentation for scheduling is lacking.

^ THIS is so annoying. I haven't really gotten "close" with flexraid, but from what I can tell there is no "Schedule Administration Page"

Has this ever been submitted as a bug or feature request? Would a new validate schedule kill the old one?

I'd say the documentation is lacking in real-world expectations. I know I've read the words from a forum post


Verify should take the longest. It could be done monthly

Validate should be the weekly task

There is a forum post about validate finding new files even though it directly followed an update

You mean you don't have your FlexRAID config page port-forwarded to the internet for offsite config?

I just deleted my old Verify and Validate tasks and recreated them to be certain. An Edit option would have been nice.

1. http://wiki.flexraid.com/2011/04/15/quick-validate-vs-validate/

2. Scheduled entries cannot be edited. It is just much simpler to delete them and create new ones.

3. There is no documented typical scheduling because it all depends on your usage pattern.

Quick-Validate: Reports changes in your array. You can manually run it once here and there to check for changes, but no point in scheduling it.
I mean, changes in your array are expected.

Update: you run it as often as you need to (based on how often data is being changed in your array). You could run it every hour or once a day or once week. It is up to you to decide.
I also recommend running the Update task right after big data changes rather than waiting for the scheduled operation to trigger.

Validate: I run it once a week to detect datarot. You could run it once a month or any other frequency. It all depends on your level of paranoia. Make sure it runs only after an Update operation has run.

Verify: I run it once a month. Again, the frequency here is driven by your level of paranoia. Make sure it runs only after an Update operation has run.

Validate and Verify do the same thing but take a different approach in doing it.
Validate was designed to replace Verify as it runs faster and detects datarot whereas Verify just does bit for bit verification.

If you want more power, check out the FlexRAID Expression Language: http://wiki.flexraid.com/2011/06/02/the-flexraid-expression-language/

This topic is reminding me to add a task that automatically syncs the RAID first before executing Validate/Verify.
Made notes to Mantis: http://bug.flexraid.com/view.php?id=299

This is an excellent idea. Implement it ASAP please

I had found that link before I posted. It explained what it did, but nothing really mentions how often one should run them. I had found other users post the 1d, 1w, 1m schedule, but had no official word. I'll consider your post the official word.

Does a verify and/or validate fail if data is added to the DRU during the checking process? As an example I have an IP cam that writes the video motion alerts to the pool. Should I bother moving the folder out of the pool?

Not unless the cam is appending to an existing file (vs a new file).
Changed data will affect Validate and Verify. New data coming in won't.

No, it won't.

What is this build for?

Why the Seagate's over WD Reds?

Reds are usually more expensive and slower than Seagate drives. Although there has a quite a lot fuss about the new Toshiba drives on other forums lately.

You got me there, didn't read through all of this yet.

I've seen the Toshiba drives for less than the Seagate drives. Any thoughts on the quality of those?