Optimal docker installation.

[Jawswing]

Okay, so I have a few questions here.

My onboard SAS died on my a few weeks ago, I bought a cheap AOC-SASLP-MV8 from eBay to try get things back online, and I ended up doing a new configuration setting it up for some reason and it turned out of the HDDs died. Lost that data... Not too much of an issue, everything was replaceable. In the process of sorting out an RMA another HDD died on me (damn 3TB Seagates).

 

Then I got the idea to just upgrade my server. Sent the motherboard off for repair, should be back soon, bought a new case and 13 more HDDs to add to the 7 working ones I have.

 

I'd been using a 1TB Samsung Evo as the cache drive, but thinking about it, I was writing everything I downloaded to it so many times. I was using Sab, so it would download the file, unrar it, send it to Coach/Sickbeard to post process and then it'd write it back to the array. So that's three times, maybe even four (not sure if it has to rewrite sending it from appdata to my seperate 'downloads' share I had).

 

So I've bought myself a 2.5" Seagate drive that I'm planning to use only for cache. That leaves me with the issue of where to install dockers. I run Plex, and I found running Plex from the SSD sped things up a lot. Whilst I was using a mechanical drive at one point for cache, if Sab was Unraring a 40GB file, Plex would become almost unresponsive. It was so slow, sometimes throwing up errors about connection etc... Installing it on an SSD seemed to sort this issue out. So I'd still like Plex to run off my SSD.

 

So... firstly. Where should I install the Docker virtual disk? I was running the 'unassigned devices' plugin I believe it was called. If I use this again, will I be able to install the Docker virtual disk to an unassigned device? As it isn't part of the array...

 

If the above isn't possible, would I be able to put the virtual disk on another drive (the mechanical cache) but install Plex to the unassigned SSD?

 

A couple of unrelated questions... I had Sickbeard set up to autodownload. Which is great, but with Coach I didn't. I'd prefer to find a movie download that I wanted to download rather than it be done automatically. So I found myself copying from the download share (which was on the cache drive), back to the array (which went back on to the cache drive), effectively halving the transfer speed. Is there a way to transfer data easily within Unraid, without needing transfer from the server, to my main PC back to the server again? I've considered setting up a VM just to do this, just so I could remote in to the VM and then transfer the data (wouldn't even know if that'd work like I wanted it to)... But, my server is more or less used only as a media server. I'd rather not lose one of my four cores to do this.

 

And I guess my final question. I currently have 8GB of RAM installed in my server (2x4GBs). With the server being on 24/7, I found that my RAM usage would increase a lot, I never really looked in to what was causing it mind. But, after a fresh boot, from memory I might have been looking at say 20% RAM usage. Then I'd not look at Unraid for a month or two, get back to it and RAM usage is sitting at 60-70%. Obviously at 70%, it still isn't necessary to get more RAM. 

I've been using Sabnzb, Coach Potato, Sickbeard (probably change that to Sonarr) and Plex at the moment. Don't really use anything else, although, I would like room for more in the future, that is if any future Dockers are available that I'm interested in. So, 16GB of RAM, do you think I should buy it (well another 2x4GB of the same RAM?).

 

I think that's all for now.

 

 

[tdallen]

Yes, you can install Docker to an Unassigned Device.

 

Are you running Sickbeard as a Docker?  Your PC should not be involved in moving files around in that case... 

 

Regarding RAM usage, it's probably a combination of your Dockers consuming more RAM over time and http://www.linuxatemyram.com/ .

[Jawswing]

Yeah, I'm running Sickbeard as a docker. That's all automated. 

I'm running coach as a docker, but that isn't automated. I just use it to keep track of films, I manually 'process' them myself.