Configuring Unraid for constant data ingest

How to configure unraid for constant downloads

Hey guys, this is my 4th blog post in this series of how to configure unraid by.....well, someone who probably shouldnt be writing this, along with my terrible grammar mistakes im only so-so when it comes to Unraid, SpaceInvader One is probably the go to guy on Unraid setup guides (i am not affiliated with him, just a big fan). Alright, done selling my self short, the purpose of this guide is to maximize my download speeds, and lessen up the work load that my array has been doing this whole time. I am moving all of my Ingest processing onto my cache in hopes that the faster read and write speeds mean my cpu has to do less work over all and can have more idle time.

so, lets get to it......

What i am running:

NZBGet

Sonarr

Radarr

Specifics needed for this setup:

A large Cache pool (mine is 2 - 1tb drives in Raid0)

Enough RAM to allocate a gig or two extra to NZBGet

I'm going to setup some 'Ingest' folders in my cache pool, I am doing this for two main reasons.

I want all the downloads, checking, and unpacking to happen as fast as it possibly can and SSD's are great for this. The second reason, quick read speeds, I want Radarr and Sonarr to pull from my SSD's / Cache only when the file is ready.

So lets get some folders going, you can land on which ever structure you want, this is just how i did it.

I will be using the command line interface or CLI for short to get this done.

CD - Changes directory "CD /mnt" -This command brings you to the dir /mnt
MKDIR - Creates a directory / Folder - "MKDIR Ingest"
Tree - Shows the directory tree from the location you are.

You can also use midnight commander "MC" if you want to work with a GUI

So lets begin.

Using the commands above we need to create the following directory tree.

cd /mnt/cache/

mkdir Ingest

cd Ingest

mkdir Downloads

cd Downloads

mkdir Complete

mkdir Incomplete

cd Complete

mkdir Movies

mkdir Shows

cd mnt/cache/Ingest

tree

*recreated in windows for a visual view*

Ok we have our folder structure setup, lets jump into the docker config for NzbGet and add a new path with the following settings 

This is case sensitive, its best to click in the host path line and click your way to the downloads folder.

ok save and let the docker rebuild, and lets jump into NzbGet and adjust some Path and Category settings.

Starting with paths we want to set the following.

The only settings to worry about right now are the MainDir DestDir and InterDir

Setting the Paths to the cache directory has the added benefits of faster que / logging creation for NzbGet. The main point is to define the MainDir variable so the variables below can make use of it.

Next lets move on to the Category settings.

Here is how i setup Movies

You should only need to set the DestDir

And here are my Shows settings

You should only need to set the DestDir

Lastly in the Download Queue section i upped the amounts for both Article Cache to 1024mb and WriteBuffer to a 1024kb

Now everything that NzbGet downloads is going to be pulled straight onto the cache drive and when its done checking and unpacking, Sonarr and Radarr will grab the files from here.

If you plan on using the Drone factory, you may want to hot inside of the docker settings for both Radarr and Sonarr and add a path to the Completed Movies or Shows folder, and inside of the web page for either assign that path variable in the drone factory location field.