Balance failed to start for volume data

[AndrewJohn]

This morning, my email notification reported the following error:

"Volume: Balance failed to start for volume data."

I searched for this message on the community forum, and the documentation, but no reference to this specific message.

What does it mean? What action is required.  Here's the last three days of log info:

[StephenB · Accepted solution]

The info in volume.log is particularly useful if you are interested in analyzing the running time of the various maintenance functions.

The balance completion will also show up in the log page in web ui.  If you select the "volume" category you'll get a much shorter list, and it will include both the start and completion of the balance.

[StephenB]

What firmware are you running?  Is disk spindown enabled?

[AndrewJohn]

Thank you for responding, StephenB.

I'm current on firmware: 6.6.1

Spindown is NOT enabled.  Should it be? 

Frankly speaking, I can't find good "best practices" information on this feature..., so I left it alone.  The unit has been a real trooper, I've replaced drives when necessary, but it's always delivered. RAID 5 setup, 4 x 3TB drives.

Oh, by the way, RAIDar and hte Admin page, alwys say everything is "Healthy."

Any ideas?

[Retired_Member]

From your screenshot I see, that you have Antivirus service enabled as it is updating the virus definitions. In 6.6.1. AV seems to be a bit unreliable and the potential cause of various issues.

I would disable that service and manually run balance a few minutes after that. If that goes through fine, there is a good chance, that your scheduled balance will also run fine the next time it should kick off anyways.

[StephenB]

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@AndrewJohn wrote:

Thank you for responding, StephenB.

I'm current on firmware: 6.6.1

Spindown is NOT enabled.  Should it be? 

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Sometimes spindown has interfered with maintenance services in past releases - that was why I was asking.

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@AndrewJohn wrote:

 Frankly speaking, I can't find good "best practices" information on this feature...,

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On "best practices" - spindown clearly will reduce power use, unless you have a scenario where the disks immediately spin back up after they spin down.  

How  spindown affects disk life is (AFAIK) an open question - I haven't seen any definitive study on that either way.  The drive works hardest when spinning up, but whether that affects motor life at all is debatable.

Personally I have spindown enabled off hours on the primary NAS, to reduce power use.  I don't enable spin down during the day, since I don't want delays when accessing the NAS.  My backup NAS do have spindown enabled all the time (and all but one are on a power schedule too).

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@AndrewJohn wrote:

Any ideas?

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I'd run the balance manually, and watch for the failure the next time it's scheduled.

I agree that disabling AV on 6.6.1 is a good idea, but I don't know specifically how it would interfere with the balance starting.  

[AndrewJohn]

Thank you, StephenB.

I'll try to get to running a balance manually later tonight, or tomorrow morning. 

I'll follow-up with another post of what I find.

Thank you,

AJ

[AndrewJohn]

Thank you Roland,

I will try that tonight, or in the morning.

I've read about the unreliableness..., but I am more likely to error on over-protection, than turning it off permanently.

But, for a couple manual rebalances, will do.

thank you,

AJ

[AndrewJohn]

Well, the regularly scheduled Balance seems to have launched.

In my reading threads on this, it appears that there are a number of posts on balance operations going on for weeks...

How will I know that it "completed" the process?

Thank you to all who contributed - much appreciated - we've got Balance Starting..., now how to know it's completed the operation?

[Retired_Member]

At the bottom of volume.log you can see the maintenance history, which looks similar to the following:

=== maintenance history ===
device operation start_time end_time result details
---------- ---------- ------------------- ------------------- ---------- ----------
data balance 2016-05-26 09:50:10 2016-05-26 09:51:03 completed
data defrag 2016-07-01 17:02:50 2016-07-01 17:04:28 completed
data balance 2016-07-01 17:05:08 2016-07-01 17:05:47 completed

You can download the logfiles as a zip container using the admin website.

[StephenB · Accepted solution]

The info in volume.log is particularly useful if you are interested in analyzing the running time of the various maintenance functions.

The balance completion will also show up in the log page in web ui.  If you select the "volume" category you'll get a much shorter list, and it will include both the start and completion of the balance.

[AndrewJohn]

Thank you both for the support, here.  And, my solution on this was that 36 hours and 15 minutes later, there it was, balance completed message in the log.

Much appreciated - I think my ReadyNAS health is back to perfect.

I trust this will be helpful to the next person with this same issue and error message.

cheers,

AJ