Checking my scheduled scrubs / tests etc are in order

[paradoxiom]

Took a few screenshots of each page of the UI including disks etc. Server is at the moment just used for streaming plex media, just hoping someone could tell me if my scheduled smart tests / scrubs / snapshots are setup properly for my setup.

Thanks in advance.

 

[danb35]

I'd set the SMART tests more often--long at least every month, short at least weekly. I'm also not sure why you want to take snapshots every hour between 1:00 and 4:00 am, and not at all at any other time.

 

[paradoxiom]

why you want to take snapshots every hour between 1:00 and 4:00 am, and not at all at any other time.

I don't "want" to, I just thought that they were essentially backups of some kind and that seemed like a time to take a backup where nothing else would be happening with the server. So is that wrong, then? how should I set them up?

Thanks,
para

 

[SweetAndLow]

snapshots are free and should happen during the time when the server is being used. This way if you accidently delete something you can revert it quickly. A good snapshot schedule could be, every hour and keep for 1 day, every day and keep for 1 week, every week and keep for 1 month, every month and keep for 1 year.

 

[paradoxiom]

snapshots are free and should happen during the time when the server is being used. This way if you accidently delete something you can revert it quickly. A good snapshot schedule could be, every hour and keep for 1 day, every day and keep for 1 week, every week and keep for 1 month, every month and keep for 1 year.

Thanks. When I just want to be taking a snapshot of the entire two 2 pools, should I select the root volume for it and use the recursive option?

Following your suggestion this is how I have it set up now, does it look fine to you?

 

[paradoxiom]

I'd set the SMART tests more often--long at least every month, short at least weekly. I'm also not sure why you want to take snapshots every hour between 1:00 and 4:00 am, and not at all at any other time.

Does this look fine for the smart settings?

thanks!

 

[Bidule0hm]

Looks good, but maybe 2 long tests per month instead of one just to be on the safe side ;)

 

[paradoxiom]

Looks good, but maybe 2 long tests per month instead of one just to be on the safe side ;)

I can't tell if you're joking or not

 

[Bidule0hm]

Not joking, it's even what I do, one test every 5 days with this pattern: long short short long short short ... which means 2 long and 4 short tests per month.

 

[paradoxiom]

Not joking, it's even what I do, one test every 5 days with this pattern: long short short long short short ... which means 2 long and 4 short tests per month.

Ah ok, I just thought doing them too often stressed the drives too much or something

 

[Bidule0hm]

Yep, it's not a good idea to do a long test each day for example because it scans the whole disk surface so it's pretty stressful mechanically speaking, but once or twice a month won't make a big difference on the disk wear.

 

[cyberjock]

snapshots are free and should happen during the time when the server is being used.

I disagree. If a file is 1/2 written, that snapshot won't be overly useful. It's much better to take snapshots when things are more static.

If you have a genuine need to take snapshots during the day, the recommendation is to take many snapshots throughout the day because then if one has a file that is only 1/2 written then you likely have several more snapshots you can potentially revert to and, hopefully, find a working copy of the file you can use.

I take my snapshots between 2AM and 3AM. Why? Because I'm often up at midnight and rarely doing anything between 2 and 3. ;)

 

[paradoxiom]

Yep, it's not a good idea to do a long test each day for example because it scans the whole disk surface so it's pretty stressful mechanically speaking, but once or twice a month won't make a big difference on the disk wear.

Alright thanks, I tweaked it a bit, how does this look now?

Also regarding the "each selected hour [to perform the test]", if I only set a start time and not an end time, does that mean the test will simply start at 4am and run until it finishes, or will it forcefully stop at 5am or something? (If they even take that long, I don't know). Also I was wondering if anyone could tell me the commands to write into the shell to just manually perform these tests and see the results right now just so I can take a look, really.

Also I don't know if you saw the post with the modified snapshots, but I changed the hourly one to every 3 hours;

Should I be staggering the time when it performs each snapshot like that? I tried to set it up so they wouldn't happen at the same time, also I think you don't want this to happen when there's a scrub going on at the same time as a smart test right?

I've set the scrubs to happen to both hard drives (it doesn't matter if both are running at the same time right? not with my CPU?)

Does anyone see any conflicts or anything I could change for the better?

Thanks again!

 

[Bidule0hm]

I think it's better to specify the days instead of an interval because that way you can't have a short test at the same time as a long test (which is not possible anyway) and avoid any errors in the logs. The test starts and then ends when it ends. It's only a few minutes for a short test and many hours for a long test (depends on the drive size and model, for example it's about 6.5 hours for my 3 TB drives). For the manual commands just look at the "Useful Commands" link in my signature.

Snapshots are very lightweight so you can do them whenever you want, but scrubs and SMART tests are pretty demanding on the drives and I recommend to not do both at the same time.

You should lower the threshold of the scrubs to something like 25 days because otherwise they may not be executed each month as you specified a day of the month.

 

[paradoxiom]

Here's what I have now, would anyone mine giving it a quick 'sanity check' for me?

I know my pools are over 80% and I'm adding another soon to alleviate that so it's only temporary.

Oh and this is zpool status if it's any help;

So just any suggestions or conflicts in my sheduled tasks etc for me? is there anything else I could do?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Your schedules all look OK to me, assuming all drives are selected in the individual SMART test tasks and that you've successfully sent a test email from FreeNAS.

any suggestions

Have you had the lecture about using RAIDZ1 with large (i.e. > 1TB) drives? Just sayin' ...

 

[paradoxiom]

Your schedules all look OK to me, assuming all drives are selected in the individual SMART test tasks and that you've successfully sent a test email from FreeNAS.

Have you had the lecture about using RAIDZ1 with large (i.e. > 1TB) drives? Just sayin' ...

Thanks, yeah they are, and the test emails work as I seem to get a "OrbitalHub.local security run output" email from the server once a night for reasons unknown.

I've been told RAIDZ1 is dumb and stupid and not to use it, about a million times already, but it's a home Plex server and is perfectly adequate for my needs. I'm not running some 50,000 user enterprise-level mail server or anything.

Thanks again!

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

about a million times already

1,000,001 and counting...
;)

 

[cyberjock]

I've been told RAIDZ1 is dumb and stupid and not to use it, about a million times already, but it's a home Plex server
and is perfectly adequate for my needs. I'm not running some 50,000 user enterprise-level mail server or anything.

Yeah, that justification is totally non-sequitur for the problem.

That's like saying my car won't start because I need some coffee. The two are totally unrelated. Totally.

Consider it 1,000,002 and counting...

 

[paradoxiom]

Yeah, that justification is totally non-sequitur for the problem.

That's like saying my car won't start because I need some coffee. The two are totally unrelated. Totally.

Consider it 1,000,002 and counting...

No it's like saying you shouldn't buy a Vauxhall because you heard your friends uncles broke down and so they're bad cars.

Can't believe this again, do you guys never stop? seriously it's no wonder communities like this are so intimidating to newcomers.