[Unraid OS version 6.12.0-rc5 available]

13 hours ago, Jclendineng said:

Number 3 is a good point, never had any issues with number 2, numerous restarts, and number 1 isn’t really an issue, it’s in the release notes and it already requires the user to be somewhat familiar with zfs for now. It’s a power user feature and I didn’t have any issues with this particular item. That said, like you said it will be resolved in 6.13…I don’t have any issues not having an array though, setup is super simple (moving from ssd to platter would be nice, that I am looking forward to). 

Others have confirmed #2 in other posts.  It is a real issue after moving the images to zfs.  Before manually moving those images it all works fine but you end up with the issues seen in #1.  

 

As for #1, it is not clearly spelled out and the UI does not help diagnose.  I understand that something may be in release notes, but for a commercial product, UX is absolutely key. 

 

Everything must do what it seems like it should be doing, which is not true in this case.  There are a ton of "my ui is locked" posts with similar issues and confusion about how information is stored and moving things around.  As a new user it took me quite a while to figure out what is going on, the forum posts pointed at other various problem and I did read the notes, but couldn't pick up on the answer until digging in.  I do understand the basic response of "but ZFS is for experts..."  Fine, then lock it behind an expert area.  If it is being used as an enticement from a marketing point of view, it must be supported and logical for a released product. 

 

This particular area needs enhancement to stave off confusion and that could be done with a very simple series of UI changes or notifications and documentation. 

 

 

[Unraid OS version 6.12.0-rc5 available]

A few issues that are fairly critical but technical users may work around.  Realistically these really need solutions for the regular unraid person experimenting with zfs.

 

First, creating a 6.12 RC5 system using a zfs raid as primary storage, it is suggested to use a second usb key as a starting point to get the array running.  This does work, but what is not clear to the user is that this will be the storage location for Dockers/VM Images, even if you go in to select the zfs drive as the location for appdata etc after the unraid system starts.  It does not automatically move the information from the usb key to ZFS and new downloaded images still seem to be created on the usb key, which is invariably going to be extremely slow.

 

This results in the UI becoming completely unresponsive during installs of docker images, startng and stopping VMs and more.  Without clear easy to see reasons why.  Easy solutions should be available or at least documented around to tell the user how to officially get everything into zfs.

 

As per other posts this will probably be a non-issue in 6.13, but we are not there yet and this should be dealt with now and not wait IMO.

 

Second: ZFS use as a storehouse for docker images/containers breaks shutdown/reboot/Stopping of the array.  Cause is simple, if you stop the array the dockers will not be shut down until the zfs subsystem is turned off, but zfs is busy due to the dockers etc so it cannot be stopped.  The order of operations needs to be corrected to stop the dockers and VMs first, then the zfs system. 

 

Third: ZFS is using logical drives as part of its assignment.  it is MUCH safer to use disk-by-id to assign drive info.  (so a device hw GUID vs /dev/sba) so then if you remove a drive and put it back it ALWAYS gets the correct information and it is easier to deal with failures etc. 

 

            sdf1    ONLINE       0     0     0
            sdg1    ONLINE       0     0     0
  VS:

ata-Hitachi_HDS722020ALA330_[..] ONLINE 0 0 0

ata-Hitachi_HDS722020ALA330_[..] ONLINE 0 0 0