disParity

disParity » General Discussion

1. Cool1Net6
   Member

   About a month ago I stumbled across this application when trying to find out more information on FlexRAID. What intrigued me about it is that it works exactly like FlexRAID, but I could actually understand how it works and use it quite easily. Scanning this forum, I also discovered that a GUI was being requested, and Roland himself was unavailable for the job. Tada! I see a weekend project!

   After heavily coding for one weekend (hours on end), I was able to get a functioning prototype GUI that contained the three core functions (create, update, restore) and gave information on the drives status. Since then I updated the app to automate all of disParity's functions and a few optimizations here and there, and a month later (to the day) I want to present what I have developed so far.

   I call it the "DisParity Storage Manager". Although this is a working copy, it hasn't met my quality bar and I do not want to release it, however, here are a few screen shots of progress.

   http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h176/StepForwarD/DSP_Main.png

   http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h176/StepForwarD/DSP_Menu.png

   http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h176/StepForwarD/DSP_Building.png

   http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h176/StepForwarD/DSP_Finished.png

   http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h176/StepForwarD/DSP_Remove.png

   http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h176/StepForwarD/DSP_Broken.png

   Its going to take me a while to really perfect this application as work just got more intense and I have less time to focus my effort here, but if you like what you see or if anyone is even still interested in the development of a GUI, just reply to this thread. I will check on it every now and then.

   Thanks.

   -Cool-

   Posted 6 years ago #

2. klim
   Member

   hi, your gui looks great. it's interesting to see how different people have different ideas to create a gui for disparity. i didn't had enough time to do some work for the gui i'm working on.

   Posted 6 years ago #

3. Roland
   Roland

   Looks really promising! I'm especially intrigued because you seem to be incorporating some of the same ideas I had back when I was thinking more about GUIs, namely the "Drive status window" showing size, free space, etc. of all the drives, and things like that.

   Anyway, keep up the great work! I look forward to trying it out.

   Posted 6 years ago #

4. Killroy
   Member

   I'm really looking forward to seeing this released so I can test it. The screen shots look great. Simple, elegant, yet functional.

   Posted 6 years ago #

5. GarenT
   Member

   +1 !!! Disparity is super easy to use, but I really like the GUI, super simple and straight forward, just like Disparity! I also like the drive status and capacity views. Great job Cool.

   Garen

   Posted 6 years ago #

6. evilx
   Member

   This looks like a great start. Any updates? Any plans to maybe incorporate it into a WHS Add-In? THAT would be super fly!

   Posted 5 years ago #

7. Cool1Net6
   Member

   Thank you all for your responses and interest in my program. I have even more motivation now to deliver a solid product.

   A short update on my progress. I have rewritten much of the code from scratch. It became difficult to track down regression errors in the main source code, so a modular design was developed. I also have become more ambitious and am planning to add a more detailed "working" window, extended options, and possibly a background monitoring service.

   However, since my posting I have had a very significant family event occur, large enough that it has prevented me from working on the DisParity Storage Manager for a majority of this time. To date, I still have not been fully capable of returning to this project, but I believe that with time I will be able to work more intently on it. I hope to have it finished late Q4 2009.

   As for a WHS Add-In, that is a possibility, but that is not scheduled for this upcoming release of DSM. My current focus is perfecting the core program functions and implementing the (planned) background monitoring service.

   Thanks.

   -Cool-

   Posted 5 years ago #

8. umax
   Member

   Any update on this? Im just about to jump on disparity or flexraid (still undecided)

   Posted 5 years ago #

9. Cool1Net6
   Member

   I dropped this project for a few months to focus on other tasks, and I ran into a bunch of stumbling blocks resulting in me trashing pretty much everything I had before. I recently got back on this project and it's nearing completion, so I want to share the redesigned teaser.

   http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h176/StepForwarD/DSM_v03_teaser.png

   Still no ETA as to when it should be finished, but I am aiming for within a week, maybe longer if I decide to write a guide.

   -Cool-

   Posted 5 years ago #

10. Neostim
    Member

    Looking good!

    Posted 5 years ago #

11. klim
    Member

    i'm also very excited to test your gui.

    Posted 5 years ago #

12. Cool1Net6
    Member

    I've completed the first publicly released version! DisParity Storage Manager v0.3.2 BETA is ready for consumption. This version is still BETA software, and still may have a few bugs here and there. If you are having any issues using it or with features that do not work as intended, just post what is wrong here and I'll try my best to address the issue.

    http://student.fau.edu/pbryan/web/dsm/

    -Cool-

    Posted 5 years ago #

13. freehand
    Member

    Looks pretty cool!

    How exactly do you have two DisParity processes running at the same time? I agree that the bottle neck is the IO of the parity drive so I am all for being able to speed that up by writing to both parity drives at the same. I am just confused how you are doing that.

    Also wouldn't writing to both parity drives at the same time defeat the purpose of having 2 parity drives for extra protection? If the computer crashed you technically could corrupt both at the same time.... Maybe I read that wrong on your site.

    Sounds interesting tho!

    Posted 5 years ago #

14. Cybie257
    Member

    Well, I wanted to post to the forum here to let Roland know that I truly appreciate his work on this project. It was one of about two or three programs that I was able to find in order to provide myself with the ability to RAID my drives, keep them easily accessible (Mainly when I dual boot from Linux to Windows). Although mdadm works great for real-time/Live RAID, the lack of Windows being able to access the RAID made it impossible for me to gain access to needed files. Unless, of course, I wanted to run a Virtual Machine, directly attached to the RAIDed drives and then share the folder through a virtual network. It works, but the drawbacks (speed, ram usage, etc.) were just too much to deal with.

    So, disParity was chosen to use. I like the fact that it is simple, easy to understand, and not with any need to install, load up the registry with more junk, and search for where it installed to. Just place it into a directory of choice, setup the config.txt file, and away you go. Can it get any simpler?

    Well, DSM by Cool1Net 6 did make it a bit easier. I'm not going to knock his program by any means, but I have run into a few problems. It's likely those problems might just be the fact it's in Alpha/Beta stage, or because of our wonderful friends at Microsoft like to mes things up in their upgradesas I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate, 64 bit, and that's where my problems may be coming from.

    So, in response to those problems, I decided it's time for me to get back into a little programming project and thus, I have created another GUI Application for disParity.

    Here is the screen-shot: http://i933.photobucket.com/albums/ad174/cyberstormin/ScreenShotsDCC/1cb9e96f.jpg

    As of the first few tests, all seems to work well. The only problem I seem to have (As it is created in Visual Basic.Net 2008, is it seems to appear "not responding" when the command is not reporting any activity. This is more likely due to the fact that I have quite a bit of files and space used up in the RAID Set.

    You will notice that the output is placed in the program itself and does not utilize a Command Prompt window. This was something I wanted to implement in order to reduce the need for another window opening and taking more screen space and taskbar space.

    Some options I still want to add are [-v] for user choice in extra verbal modes when available, and to have it update at user preferred intervals, such as that with DSM.

    Please give me any feedback on whether or not you would like to see this program released. It will be freeware or Open Source (have yet to decide). This program was began and completed in the same day and, although I have yet to see a crash (as long as the files/directory are placed where the need to go before running), it seems to be pretty stable.

    -Cybie

    Posted 5 years ago #

15. Klaatou
    Member

    of course "we" want it to be released ;)

    do you have the 8 disks limit ? it is something I don't know if it is a disparity limitation or not

    thanks

    Posted 5 years ago #

16. klim
    Member

    @Cybie257:

    wow, your gui looks very similar to my gui "disparity center" :-)

    Posted 5 years ago #

17. Cybie257
    Member

    @Klaatou: I had up to 24 volumes on at once for a test, so the 8 limit doesn't seem to be a factor, but not knowing the true internal programming with disParity, that may or may not be of any concern for protection.

    @klim: It would be interesting to see a screen-shot of your GUI. :)

    Overall, I would like to release this for others to use, but not until I figure out how to safely remove a volume and not affect the reliability of the parity set. I think that problem might be resolved by using the method used in DSM by Cool1Net6, eliminating the 1,2,3 after the keyword 'data', but not sure how that is being done as disParity fails to read the config file without those indicators. Other than that issue, I have had a lot of success with testing and using it on my live setup.

    I'll keep the thread updated and post a link when I get the current issue resolved to where I feel good about allowing others to use it. I don't want to compromise others data with any 'known' problems.

    Posted 5 years ago #

18. Roland
    Roland

    Hey, not bad for a day's work! :) Looks very nice.

    There's no limit to the # of disks you can protect with disParity.

    While disks can be added incrementally, you can't remove a disk from disParity without rebuilding the entire parity set.

    Posted 5 years ago #

19. klim
    Member

    here you can take a look to my gui:
    http://klimbacher.vox.com/library/post/software-release-disparity-center-v02.html

    Posted 5 years ago #

20. Cybie257
    Member

    Thank you, Roland, for that bit of information and the comment. :) Based on that confirmation, my disParity Control Center GUI should be ready to go shortly. I only have a few items to polish up. Other than that, it appears all is working as should. I do want to add a confirmation pop-up box for the removal of an existing volume in order to warn for the need to rebuild the entire set. Since it took my system 1.5 days to complete the initial parity set, I would not want someone to find out the hard way...

    For those interested, keep an eye on this thread for a link to appear for the download.

    Cybie257

    Posted 5 years ago #

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