Will moving Plex jail solve this?

[flybynite]

Running a nice little freenas box as a media and document server and it is in the most part running 9.3 well. It is almost silent and runs pretty cool

I get a noticable disk access every 3 seconds or so when the box is idle. The sound of 6 x reds doing a write in unison is like a 'thump' every few seconds. This disappears completely when I turn the Plex plugin off.

It is the noise that bothers on what is a very quiet box (and the reds are far quieter than the Hitachi's I had before) but the constant writing cannot be that good for it either.

I have read a few posts that indicate that it could be the Plex jail. I have read the process of moving it to SSD and would like to know a couple of things

Firstly do people think moving the Jails to SSD will have the same effect on the noise as turning the plugin off?

Secondly if I am going to install another port and SSD is it a good idea to mirror the SSD and is there anything else better on that SSD while I am at it (it will help with sizing the disks)

Only second post so be gentle

 

[dlavigne]

Were you able to figure this out?

 

[flybynite]

No, I was hoping someone would have seen this before before I bit the bullet. I do not have any SATA ports left on the board or spare SSDs so it would be a fair purchase to solve a minor niggle. The more I read the more I think it can only be the Plex jail as the problem goes away when the Plex plugin is turned off.

I may end up with a couple of spare 256GB SSds out of machines upgrading to bigger which I will put in as a mirrored pair. That should give enough room for jails and moving the ZIL here may also reduce writes to the main pool

It may also give room for some L2ARC (although I don't really think I need that too much)

If I do I will post back with the findings either way