1 hour ago, brandon3055 said:

the official ZFS support does not really add any value over the ZFS plugins already available.

The biggest add is the ability to leverage the user share system.

 

You could put a single pro grade SSD as disk1 with no parity for use as your docker and system files locations, and set up your 8 disk RAID-Z2 as your "main" array. It's really just a matter of semantics, as you could just as easily put a USB 2.0 1GB flash drive as disk1 and have your RAID-Z2 be the only real storage in the system.

 

Or set up any combination of RAID level pools, all feeding into a single user share structure.

In this new "major" update? now that zfs is supported is the maximum supported drive still 30?

Thanks!

1 hour ago, Hoopster said:

It would be a departure for unRAID technically and philosophically.

That wouldn't be a bad thing in my opinion. Unraid has a lot more to offer than just its storage technology. Don't get me wrong. Unraids storage system is great but I think it would be better if it was optional. That would allow unraid to be a more general purpose hypervisor with a lot of really nice features.

35 minutes ago, JonathanM said:

The biggest add is the ability to leverage the user share system.

 

You could put a single pro grade SSD as disk1 with no parity for use as your docker and system files locations, and set up your 8 disk RAID-Z2 as your "main" array. It's really just a matter of semantics, as you could just as easily put a USB 2.0 1GB flash drive as disk1 and have your RAID-Z2 be the only real storage in the system.

 

Or set up any combination of RAID level pools, all feeding into a single user share structure.

It sounds like I'm going to have to go the route of using a flash drive as disk1. Which is what I was already planning to do if I went with the zfs plugin. It's just such a nasty hack which I was hoping the official zfs support would allow me to avoid.

1 minute ago, brandon3055 said:

I was hoping the official zfs support would allow me to avoid.

Starting Unraid with only pools is still a possibility. It's been discussed in the past, but I am not privy to how far that discussion has gone. Who knows, it might show up sooner rather than later.

 

I wouldn't count on it until it's officially announced though. Adding single volume and ZFS pools is probably enough major changes for this upcoming cycle. Too many changes at once makes for a very messy release.

1 hour ago, brandon3055 said:

That wouldn't be a bad thing in my opinion. Unraid has a lot more to offer than just its storage technology.

Yeah, I am not arguing that they can't or shouldn't change it; just that, so far, they have stuck to a particular model.  Who knows what the future may bring?

9 hours ago, brandon3055 said:

Thats really my main concern. Will unraid let me use a RAID-Z as my main array without also having to have a 'traditional' unraid array. 

I believe that was mentioned as a possibility for the future, but you can always assign an old flash drive as a single array data device, then have a pool as you main storage, I already do that with some of my servers where there's no array, just multiple pools. 

On 1/3/2023 at 11:01 PM, gyto6 said:

Euhhhhh...

 

You can already use ZFS in Unraid with no GUI, instead of leaving the dust on your server : Support Forum

 

Can't say you're wrong but to understand where i'm coming from: Used TrueNAS and hated it. It's a great storage system but not very consumer friendly (regarding the whole app system etc.). You can tell who their target audience is. I figured that it will be a nice compromise to use Unraid and bought the license in order to use it with the ZFS plugin. But it adds another layer of complexity which i'm not comfortable with. Then I saw the announcement and I was like...well yeah...let's wait.

7 hours ago, JorgeB said:

I believe that was mentioned as a possibility for the future, but you can always assign an old flash drive as a single array data device, then have a pool as you main storage, I already do that with some of my servers where there's no array, just multiple pools. 

 

As someone who has never used unraid before: That would mean that a single USB stick is sufficient for the installation files and the array data device or would i need two for that setup?

 

Is it possible to do an offsite backup from the unraid GUI of the array data device so i can just restore it on a new usb stick in case of failure?

27 minutes ago, orhaN_utanG said:

That would mean that a single USB stick is sufficient for the installation files and the array data device or would i need two for that setup?

You'd need 2.

 

27 minutes ago, orhaN_utanG said:

Is it possible to do an offsite backup from the unraid GUI of the array data device so i can just restore it on a new usb stick in case of failure?

In this case the array flash drive would usually not be used for data, but yes, it can be backed up.

On 1/4/2023 at 4:32 PM, brandon3055 said:

I really hope i have not misunderstood the planned ZFS implementation. When i hear "ZFS Support", Single device pools are not exactly the first thing that comes to mind. My plan this whole time has been to setup my main array as a RAID-Z2 with 8 disks. Please tell me thats actually going to be possible...

 

On the flip side, I think there are many of us that are going to get the benefits of the ZFS file system, without being forced in to a striped array. That is one of Unraid's biggest and most valuable selling points. If you want a striped array, TrueNAS is already available and will do that. For free even. 

 

There are just too many drawbacks for striped arrays (regardless of the file system) for a home media server imo. More wear and tear on disks, more expensive to expand, at a much higher cost $/TB, significantly more expensive to operate, etc. 

 

While I'm not hoping for guys like you who want RAIDz support, I'm going that's not the only option we'll get with ZFS support. 

 

Something else to possibly consider, when you hear "ZFS support", it shouldn't immediately make you think of RAIDz. ZFS is a file system, not a array structure. 

Hello Unraid-Allies,

I am completely new to Unraid and when I heard about the ZFS offer I just bought a license. My plan would be to create a ZFS mirror with two 16TB disks for private (important) data and an Unraid array for media data. That should be possible!? RAIDz I currently see no advantage, must rather agree with the previous post that it, if you do not necessarily need performance above 1Gbit actually brings no advantages (except of course to use proportionally less memory than a "mirror").

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

We'll find out Soon™️

Our plan is to release a public beta soon(tm) which includes OpenZFS support and changes which Plugin authors need to be aware of.  Posting this now as a sneak peak, more detail will follow.  That said....

 

ZFS support: this will let you create a named pool similar to how you can create named btrfs pools today.  You will have choice of various zfs topologies depending on how many devices are in the pool.  We will support single 2, 3, and 4-way mirrors, as well as groups of such mirrors (a.k.a., raid10).  We will also support groups of raidz1/raidz2/raidz3. We will also support expansion of pools by adding additional vdev of same type and width to existing pool.   Also will support raid0.  It's looking like first release we will support replacing only single devices of a pool at a time even if the redundancy would support replacing 2 or 3 at time - that support will come later.  Initially we'll also have a semi-manual way of limiting ARC memory usage.  Finally, a future release will permit adding hot spares and special vdev's such as L2ARC, LOG, etc. and draid support.

 

webGUI change: there are several new features but the main change for Plugin authors to note is that we have upgraded to PHP v8.2 and will be turning on all error, warning, and notices.  This may result in some plugins not operating correctly and/or spewing a bunch of warning text.  More on this later...

 

By "public release" we mean that it will appear on the 'next' branch but with a '-beta' suffix.  This means only run on test servers since there may be data integrity issues and config tweaks, though not anticipating any.  Once any initial issues have been sorted, we'll release -rc1.

6 hours ago, Brandon_K said:

On the flip side, I think there are many of us that are going to get the benefits of the ZFS file system, without being forced in to a striped array. That is one of Unraid's biggest and most valuable selling points. If you want a striped array, TrueNAS is already available and will do that. For free even. 

 

On 1/5/2023 at 12:00 PM, brandon3055 said:

Unraid has a lot more to offer than just its storage technology. Don't get me wrong. Unraids storage system is great but I think it would be better if it was optional. That would allow unraid to be a more general purpose hypervisor with a lot of really nice features.

 

You make it sound like i'm suggesting unraid should abandon its storage technology. I'm not. Unraids storage technology is one of its best features. Especually for home/diy servers where the ability to expand over time can be extreamely useful. But as i said. Unraid is so much more than just its storage technology. Its community application support alone puts it miles ahead of TrueNAS (for me anyway)

 

But striped arrays do still have their uses. Once you get to the point where your builting out a new NAS fully loaded with new drives. Expandability may not be such a big concern. And you may want the additional speed and unbeatable bitrot protection that comes with a striped ZFS array. I'm not sying unraid should abandon its storage sustem.
I'm simply saying it would be nice to have the option of using a striped zfs array. 

When the RAID-Z expansion feature is finished and if Unraid adds support for it, that should provide the storage flexibility that Unraid is known for (being able to expand your array with single disks), with the only downsides compared to Unraid's storage implementation being that you can't add additional parity drives as your expand your vDev, and you can't access data from disks individually.

I'm very excited about official ZFS support!

I've been using the ZFS plugin for some time to run a secondary pool that I have my dockers and VM data on.  Will this be recognized automatically by unRaid 6.12 or will I need to recreate it?

 

3 minutes ago, jammin said:

I'm very excited about official ZFS support!

I've been using the ZFS plugin for some time to run a secondary pool that I have my dockers and VM data on.  Will this be recognized automatically by unRaid 6.12 or will I need to recreate it?

That is a good question. Will it be possible to import existing ZFS pools created by the ZFS plugin or by another system like TrueNAS?

Edited January 11, 20233 yr by brandon3055

19 minutes ago, brandon3055 said:

That is a good question. Will it be possible to import existing ZFS pools created by the ZFS plugin or by another system like TrueNAS?

That's the goal.

On 1/5/2023 at 6:11 AM, brandon3055 said:

then the official ZFS support does not really add any value over the ZFS plugins already available. 
Atleast not for me...

I have diy hdd racks and messy cabling. I need unraid to detect all disks are in place before starting zfs pool.

Awesome!

 

But, it would be great to have array sizes beyond the 30 drive limit or have multiple arrays

Edited January 11, 20233 yr by PeterDB

Any news on linux kernel 6.0?  I'd like to get some Intel ARC support going. 

5 hours ago, brandon3055 said:

You make it sound like i'm suggesting unraid should abandon its storage technology. I'm not. Unraids storage technology is one of its best features. Especually for home/diy servers where the ability to expand over time can be extreamely useful. But as i said. Unraid is so much more than just its storage technology. Its community application support alone puts it miles ahead of TrueNAS (for me anyway)

 

But striped arrays do still have their uses. Once you get to the point where your builting out a new NAS fully loaded with new drives. Expandability may not be such a big concern. And you may want the additional speed and unbeatable bitrot protection that comes with a striped ZFS array. 

No no, I wasn't suggesting that at all, just saying there are those of us who would like it to stay the way it is, while still being able to utilize ZFS (or more specifically, have the choice to go either way).

Striped arrays for me isn't even a matter of expansion, but rather power.  I have no need to have the read performance of a striped array in a media server, so it's silly (for me) to pay to have 15 disks spun when all I need is 1.

I would think that they're still able to leverage self correcting bitrot protection with the existing array format.  I am by no means a pro on ZFS, but as I understand it, it's simply a function of parity, not directly *striped* parity.

Is it possible to combine both zfs and xfs on a single array? if not, will there be a tool/plugin to migrate existing xfs(which probably most unraid user are using) to zfs.?

Edited January 11, 20233 yr by jonathanselye

2 hours ago, Brandon_K said:

I would think that they're still able to leverage self correcting bitrot protection with the existing array

In the array zfs will be able to detect data corruption, but not fix it, same as btrfs, you'd need to delete/restore affected files, though if it was really a bitrot case, which in my experience is very rare, and parity was not updated you could rebuild that disk.

2 hours ago, jonathanselye said:

Is it possible to combine both zfs and xfs on a single array?

Yes, as you currently can have xfs, btrfs and reiserfs in the array at the same time.