Hi all, happy to join the Unraid forums!
TL/DR: moving from OMV to Unraid, please advise on my envisaged disk layout below.
As an intro, after starting with Synology a long time ago I’ve been running a home server for the last 6 years using OpenMediaVault 5 and 6 (Debian 10 and 11). I’m familiar with Debian so that was a natural choice for me at the time, but less so lately. I don’t like the docker implementation in OMV and find myself doing a lot of manual work in the terminal. Which was fine at first, but my time has become more limited. I’ve been delaying the upgrade to OMV7 (Debian 12) and looking at alternatives, finally settling on Unraid 7 which seems the best fit for me.
I’ve been researching docs and YouTube but still have a few choices to make. And since I’m rebuilding my ‘production’ server I want to get this right the first time, so your advice is appreciated.
I’m using Unraid 7.0.0-rc1 on the following hardware:
Case: Antec P100 tower
Board: Fujitsu Kontron D3644-B
CPU: Intel i3-9100
RAM: 64GB ECC
Services:
Media server (audio, video, photo)
SMB shares
Time Machine
Docker containers (Photoprism, Plex, Syncthing, DSMR-reader, databases, etc.)
a single VM, maybe
Disk layout (envisaged):
Array: 4x 8TB HDD
for static data, long term storage of media and user homes
WD Red NAS HDD
formatted XFS, single parity
Array Cache: 2x 256GB SSD
for downloads and performance improvement of the Array
Silicon Power A55 SSD
formatted ZFS mirror
Pool: 3x 2TB NVMe
for dynamic data: docker, appdata, VMs, user homes
Transcend 220S M.2 NVMe
formatted ZFS raidz1
I’m happy with the layout but not sure about the formatting. First: I want to use ZFS on the pool for its performance and robustness. And with all this RAM, performance should not be a problem. But historically docker on ZFS was a problem, how is this now on Unraid?
Second is the Array HDD format. I think the standard XFS is just fine, or is there a reason to use BTRFS or ZFS in the array? On single disks with overnight parity I’m not sure what the benefit is. I want the disks to spin down so not using raidz1 for that reason.
On OMV I‘ve used both ext4 and BTRFS, but ext4 performance was much faster (no COW). And with the Snapraid plugin on OMV (similar to overnight parity in Unraid) I didn’t make use of the BTRFS snapshot features anyway. These days I’m leaning less towards advanced command line and more towards ‘just work’ and GUI implementation for mission critical parts.
Sorry for the long intro, but hope this helps to give advice on the questions. Thanks in advance!