Interpreting the ARC Reporting Graphs - or - would I benefit from more RAM under these conditions

[Chris Moore]

Your situation might actually benefit from a kind of tiered storage. You might want to have one file server that is configured for speed but only has 6 to 8 TB of storage and another server for 'cold' storage that is configured for the more economical mass storage that you are using now. It might even be possible to setup some scripting that automatically moves files to the cold storage after they go over a certain age.

 

[JamesNisly]

I see. Thanks a ton for the insight. It's certainly not unusable as it is; it just takes a little patience that first time you get into the folder. You're right that it is a very recent build. My first FreeNAS/ZFS, in fact, so I'm learning a lot. It's already a LOT faster than what it replaced, but we upgraded cameras this year so individual RAW files are larger than they have ever been. My old home-brewed hardware raid/windows file server was starting to buckle under the weight.

I'm also going to start dividing the files into subfolders by camera serial number upon import so we can get started quicker without having to wait for absolutely everything to load. We each do a an initial round of culling on only our own images so this might make sense for us. It's good to know that there are upgrade paths available but I don't think the need has risen to the level of changing pool configurations and going 10Gbe just yet.

I definitely wanted to make sure I'm not leaving any easy speed increases on the table. Adding more RAM is pretty low hanging fruit so I was hopeful that there might be something to be gained there. It looks like I could add another 25GB for about $70 on ebay. I might anyway; probably won't hurt.

Ah, saw your recent post while I was typing the above. I'm going to give some thought to the tiered server idea. I still have the 8 4TB drives from the old server and a super micro case just sitting on the shelf now. I could swap out the MOBO, get a disk controller, and do another FreeNAS build on that.

 

[Chris Moore]

It looks like I could add another 25GB for about $70 on ebay. I might anyway; probably won't hurt.

No, I don't think it will hurt. :)

 

[JamesNisly]

Ok, one last question (maybe) - If mechanical disk/platter speed is the main culprit here, would you expect the "disk busy" to be up near 100% under heavy load? I don't think I've ever seen it above 40%-50%.

 

[rs225]

The easiest way to answer the disk-load question is to run two of these folder operations at the same time, from separate computers.