Save/access data locally to/from Greyhole w. SP

[sandstroem]

Hi all,

I've been using WHS for a while but got something up the *** by MS recently. I got recommended trying out Amahi as a replacement and it has been a lovely meeting! What a great system!

Along the ride everything has been working flawlessly but I have a few questions, four to be exact, and all of them are related to Greyhole and storage pooling.

First:
I have a few harddrives, formatted as NTFS, with some data that I want to move to my storage pooling. Is it possible to mount the harddrive to the HDA itself, move the content from the mounted drive to the storage pool?

If any, what will do the trick? As I understand it, using /var/hda/files/[share]/ won't do the trick as only symbolic links reside in that folder, referring to the correct disk: drive1, drive2 etc. Right or wrong? Greyhole itself is based on LZ and pooling. I wish to copy the files directly to the LZ (to get the transactions correct, the same as copying over SMB for example.) Can someone provide me some good examples regarding this?

Second:
I need offsite backups of certain files on my HDA, and I found CrashPlan the right one for this goal. I want to run it on the HDA itself, since the service and machine is running all the time anyway. I wish to backup the whole content of certain shares. Examples: Share named 'Documents' & 'Photos'. Which path should I set up in the client on the HDA to be able to backup to offsite from the shares within the storage pooling? As I mentioned earlier, /var/hda/files/[share] won't do the trick. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Third:
Similar to first question. Anyway: Reguarly I need to use FTP to save data on my HDA. When using Greyhole (with SP), which path should be the correct one to use if I want the destination to reside within the pool?

Example: Share named 'Graphics' which reside in the storage pool along with 6 different disks. These files are quite heavy and I want the LZ to understand that these are new files and process them to the SP. Is this possible?

Fourth:
Another one regarding CrashPlan. You see, I am using backup from my clients to my Amahi server. I've installed it through the webgui appstore, and the default paths in CrashPlan are set to the system drive, also the LZ in this setup. The behaviour when backing up from a client will use space from the LZ and won't be backed up if the system fails.

Here's how I want it to be: Setting up a new share, include it in the storage pool with "extra copies" enabled will enhance the redundancy of the files backed up. Also the LZ will be free'd up. Again, which path should be the correct one to use if I wish to use the share called "CrashPlan"?


Woah, a lot of text. If there is something that I need to clarify, pleaes let me know. Reply and you'll make my day

[gboudreau]

1. Not sure you'll get much faster transfers with locally mounted NTFS drives versus connecting those to a Windows computer, and transferring the files using mounted shares. NTFS speed in Linux is very so-so.
If you still want to do this, you can copy directly in /var/hda/files/share_name/
Once you're done, you'll need to run this command:

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greyhole --fsck --dir /var/hda/files/share_name/

This command will look for files in that directory, and transform them into symlinks.

2. Indeed, trying to backup /var/hda/files/share_name will just backup symlinks. What you want is to configure 'sticky_files' for those share, so that all copies of the files on those share will always be together on one of the drive in your pool. To configure that, edit the /var/hda/platform/html/config/greyhole.yml file:

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sticky_files: - - Music/ - - Documents/ - - Photos/

Then, you'll need to force Amahi to re-generate greyhole.conf. To do so, go in the Dashboard, in Setup > Shares, and edit a share (any one), and click to change the Location, but don't change it, just hit Save.
If you already had files in those shares, you'll need to

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greyhole --balance

to ask GH to move the files where they should be (together).
Finally, you'll want to add those dirs in CrashPlan:
/var/hda/files/drives/drive1/gh/Documents
/var/hda/files/drives/drive1/gh/Photos
but replace drive1 in the above path to the location of the Documents and Photos files.

3. Mount the Graphics share locally, and use the path to the mount (/mnt/sanba/graphics for example) in your FTP server configuration.
http://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Mount_Shares_Locally

4. Same as 3. With a CrashPlan share that uses the Pool, and has extra copies as need, mount the CrashPlan share locally, and in CrashPlanDesktop, use that path to store client's backups.

Good luck.

[sandstroem]

Thank you gboudreau for your fast reply!

I will try out the suggestions provided right away, thank you again.