SSD only Unraid

[RackIt]

I am now testing all SSD in a Dell R630. Though I'm running into some issues.

 

I have 4 2TB SSD's which I want to place into a single pool as 2 mirrored vdevs.

 

I place 2 SSD's into a zfs mirror. Start the array and format. All good.

 

I stop the array and change the pool to 4 disks. I add the additional 2 SSD's.

 

The trouble starts when I start the array. The array simply stays at "Starting Array - Mounting disks...".

 

[JorgeB]

1 minute ago, RackIt said:

The array simply stays at "Starting Array - Mounting disks...".

Please post the diagnostics.

[RackIt]

1 hour ago, JorgeB said:

Please post the diagnostics.

I forced a reboot. And then started the array after the reboot. The array took a while to come online but the zfs 4-drive pool seems to be online. I'm going to remove the pool and repeat the creation.

 

Edit: I just recreated the 4-drive zfs pool and this time it went smoothly.

 

I removed the diags since the problem seems to have been temporary.

Edited September 5, 2023 by RackIt

[pesta]

On 6/17/2023 at 11:12 AM, JorgeB said:

Unraid supports trim, just not for the array, since currently that would make parity out of sync.

 

Then how hard it is to create a function that:

1 - stops the array

2 - trims all the drives

3 - recalculates parity

4 - starts the array

 

Is there a way to request this to the developers?

 

I really want to use SSDs because of the noise. But I don't want to use ZFS, the beautiful thing about UNRAID is that it's almost impossible to lose all the data.

 

With a RAID-Z1, if I lose 2 disks I'm toast. With UNRAID at most I lose the data on those 2 (maybe even 1 if the other is parity).

 

Thanks

[itimpi]

1 minute ago, pesta said:

 

Then how hard it is to create a function that:

1 - stops the array

2 - trims all the drives

3 - recalculates parity

4 - starts the array

 

Is there a way to request this to the developers?

 

I really want to use SSDs because of the noise. But I don't want to use ZFS, the beautiful thing about UNRAID is that it's almost impossible to lose all the data.

 

With a RAID-Z1, if I lose 2 disks I'm toast. With UNRAID at most I lose the data on those 2 (maybe even 1 if the other is parity).

 

Thanks

The biggest problem is that the driver for the main array does not (currently at least) support trim.  

[JorgeB]

9 minutes ago, pesta said:

I really want to use SSDs because of the noise.

You can still use them, depending on the devices performance degradation might not be that great or even noticeable.

[bagican]

What are currently the best / most reasonable options for configuration for SSD only NAS? In my case: 3x SSD: 2x 4TB SATA (Samsung 860 Evo) + 1x m.2 NVMe 2TB (Samsung 980 Pro).

I'm still new here. I'm not sure if it is still useful to have SSD cache in my case with SSDs only.

I'm limited to 1x m.2 and 2x SATA ports.

Plan is to run some docker containers (16GB RAM).

[JorgeB]

I would recommend using pools, you can use an old flash drive to fulfill the current array device requirement.

[tweedyc]

FYSA, a few months ago I took the plunge and I went ahead and built a Dell r730 with 24 4TB Evo SSDs.  I used ZFS.  It runs fine.  If you mix and match SSDs of various sizes, they need to be in pools that contain drives of the same size.  Good luck.

[bagican]

Should I choose ZFS? in pool 2x 4TB SSD (860 Evo). I tried now BTRFS (with RAID 1 mirroring).

Are there any other considerations to keep in mind regarding SSDs, similar to Trim functionality?

[elvismercado]

I actually have the setup that @JorgeB wrote.

 

Dropping my build here as @bagican question can be answered by the example I have.

 

I have many devices I use almost every day. And I have a lot of files and stuff saved for quick access. I used to use Dropbox to synchronise my files between Personal Laptop, Work Laptop, Android Phone, Game PC and any other PC I need. These files are about 50GB of files.
To do that efficiently Dropbox requires you to pay almost €200 a year for this type of quick and easy synchronisation.

 

So I decided to move to Nextcloud. But I also didn’t want a power-hungry pc running 24/7. So I took those €200 and bought an N100 mini pc from aliexpress.
I am very happy with the snappiness and the low power consumption even though its not the most powerful thing out there.

 

I already had an unused unpaid license so I install unraid on it and installed the nextcloud aio docker container.
To abide by the requirements of Unraid I added USB flash drive I had lying around and use that as the Array without parity. And the 256GB SSD of the mini pc is setup as a pool device using zfs.
And then setup the pool device as the storage for docker and vm’s and everything else. That way ill benefit from the SSD.

 

My setup:
Mini PC GK3 Plus
CPU: Intel N100 CPU
Drive: 256GB SSD
RAM: 8GB
OS: Unraid

 

Containers:
Nextcloud-aio: Used for file synching, calendar, contacts, notes, etc
syncthing: sync different files and folders
cloudflared: Opens up a tunnel to access Nextcloud from wherever I am.
duplicati: Used to create backup of nextcloud to the cloud.(yes ironic)

 

For the zfs setup i would think very hard about it because as i understand you can’t just add any drives at a later moment. They have to be of the same size and you need to add the same configuration. So if you start with 2x 4TB and later want to add storage you can only expand it with a new pool of 2x 4TB. Please correct me if I’m mistaken.

 

I hope my example helps.