Ronald Q

thanks a lot for your reply. Understood

Hi, i realized when you use zfs in a pool or main array the system allocate some part of my ram to this endevour. I run a pretty old z170 chipset mother board, i7-2700k cpu (4C 8T), and im limited to 16Gb of hardware ram. My cpu allows for 32. But the motherboard does not. Actually my unraid os allocate 2GB from the total 16GB to the zfs system. I suppose is a type of cache or something. Not sure about how it works under the hood. Can i increase the allocated ram to zfs? how? is 2gb not enough? can i get bad performance for the lack of ram allocated to ZFS? Thanks

Thank you all for the reply. According to what i understand now after a lot of research/trial and error, this work like this: 1) The "main array" ONLY can use proprietary unraid redundancy and easy expansion scheme. So, You can have here 1 or 2 parity drives max (regardless of the filesystem you use). also this main array is mandatory, at least until actual release 6.12.10. So you need to have at least 1 disk on here, you use it or not. Advantages of the unraid main array: easy expansion adding more disks without need for parity sync or array rebuild due to expansion. you can use different size disk without loosing any space if you loose a disk you only loose access and performance on the files stored in that specific disk until it is replaced and new disk filled again with the parity data. Other files in the "unraid main array" will not be at risk in this process, and performance to serve those files would not be degraded. Disadvantages on the unraid main array: speed is not great with spinning drives because you are not stripping the data along all the disks in the array, instead you write files to a single disk and the parity disks. you cannot have 3 parity drives (max 2) 2) The so called pool is an array (using the legacy array term form the hardware RAID era) or collection of disks. In those pools we can configure disks to make arrays (mirror, 1 stripping 0, raid 10 type, single disk parity, dual disk parity or triple disk parity) depending on the file system you use in those pools. Something similar to the vdevs used in trueNAS software. advantages of the unraid pools: you can create super fast raidZ arrays or vdevs using mechanical drives. For example with 24 disks you can create 4 groups of 6 disks. Each group/vdev can be single parity raidz1, dual parity raid z2, or triple parity raidz3. you can create pools with different filesystems that suit best the specific requirements of the files, dockers or vms you will run/store on those pools. disadvantages of the unraid pool: question: performance will be degraded in case of a failed drive? until you replace failed disk and rebuild? im not entirely sure about this. specially if you use raidz2 or raidz3 models. 3) definitely there is something pending to do with the terminology in the documentation. Is very confusing at first for new users. Please don't get me wrong i like this softwarea lot. But im used to the traditional hardware raid terminology. 4) what i miss actually: ability to assign a single/subpool drive like ssd/nvme for cache to a specific pool or the main unraid array for exclusive use. If your network don't bottleneck you can use a raid10 of nvmes to cache a spinning drives pool. So depending on your hardware you can achieve 24.000 or more mbits/s of more in write speeds to that pool. This can open uraid to a new level of enterprise customers. The only disadvantages i could find on youtube for unraid are lack of performance for large or enterprise applications. being able to not use the main unraid proprietary array if i don't need it. global l2arc cache Please correct me if im wrong on anythig. Thanks

Hi im totally new to unraid. I have my server up and running checking parity now with a trial key. But so many doubts. I have 15 HDDS (all 2tb hitachi sata) and 2x120gb ssd. Old hardware but want to make a Complete home NAS solution and some docker containers. 1) whats the difference between the main array and the pools? If i use my 15 hhds in the main array i can only run raidz2? what about raidz3 in the main array? 2) What is the point to have an Array in the first place? why not to create single/multiple pools instead? 3) Can i expand later with more disks a raidz2 array/pool? 4) if i replace the parity drives with bigger ones, then i can replace one of the 2 tb array drives with a bigger one? 5) best file system for my 2xssd (sata3) in cache pool? 6) Main differences between ZFS and xfs file systems? future expandability? performance? 7) Will my dockers run better in the ssd (mirrored)?

i understand now. thank you very much. In the drivers section i can pass additional parameters to the controller. May be, we can use that. Unfortunately the raid controller is very old and highpoint support is less than terrible. Only hope is someone with experience on highpoint controllers and commands to do it. Lets wait is someone had solve this issue or similar.

There is any workaround? configuration parameter for the controller? driver? or any other way to make it work. I cannot pay for a SF-8087 x24 non-raid port HBA at this time In the logs shows diferent id numbers for each drive for example 1:0:0:0: 1:0:1:0: 1:0:3:0:

hi folks. Im trying a new setup to use an old hardware i have to create my first unraid server. Im totally new to this OS and a complete dummie in linux. So please i would appreciate a little detailed explanation to solve this. Hardware specs Chasis: Norco RPC-4224 24 bay sata/sas hotswap. Back-planes have six total SFF-8087 connectors HBA: HighPoint RocketRAID 3560 1Gb ram 24 ports. (I think it uses intel chipset, ) 2x1rb Nvme for cache drives 21 drives. Mainly hitachi 2tb, 3tb and wd 2tb. I successfully created an array using the nvme drives (attached to the mobo). unraid detect the and format them, all fine. The inferno comes with the spinning drives. System boots fine but only 1 of 21 drives is available to use in the array. If i disconnect the usable drive and reboot another drive will be available but only ONE. I tried change the 3560 card to all the pcie ports in the mobo with no luck i tried the run the 3560 in no raid mode (at bios startup in the internal card bios software you can select raid, mixed mode or non-raid). I ried the three options with no luck. I take out 3 disks 2 tb attached via sata (motherboard) to another machine and format them in windows. They are detected. formatted and totally usable. I put them back in unraid and same behavior. I realize unraid is loading rocketraid 3560 drivers just fine My system log are flooded with theese log shows drive detection but also shows errors on initialization i think I can see this under system devices: But in my main tab only these drives are available to use in the array as you can see th 2xNvme drives and only 1 spinning drive. I cannot buy a new 24 port HBA at this time. I would like to use my existing hardware. I will really appreciate any help on this nas-unraid-diagnostics-20240531-1135.zip