Hey folks,
I'm currently running the setup in my signature. I originally placed the Plex database on my storage pool, figuring the ZFS genie would automatically keep a backup copy for me. For reasons I don't completely understand, Plex seems sensitive to changes in the storage pool and I've had to follow this procedure when simply upgrading pool drives to get Plex to connect to its database. It recently started acting strangely and when I used Clonezilla to restore to a saved, good configuration less than a month old, Plex refused to connect to the database even though a pool scrub returned 0 errors. The database size is somewhere between 10GB - 11GB.
I tried moving the database to a separate 64GB SSD and following the same process. No joy. So at this point I'm just rebuilding the database in this new location, which is extremely painful considering that I have a little over 2TB of material and live in the sticks and have 59 KBps DSL. I REALLY want to avoid doing this again if possible. When finished, I'll set up an rsync job to keep a backup copy of the database. My main concern with this setup is that the database is mounted as /media/UUID/plexmediaserver and I may have to go through this again if when this drive fails.
I'm also completely comfortable using this idea to create a separate partition on the system drive and placing the database on the same physical drive. The advantage would seem to be that a cloned image would automatically include the database, and should eliminate any problems with Plex not communicating with its database, unless I expand the pool and the drive letters change which might upset Plex.
I'm interested in any ideas or suggestions about which would be the best course to follow - separate drive or separate partition? SSD drive for read speed or platter drive due to the numerous writes?
Thanks.