In Unraid, the cache was originally used to provide write acceleration for the array. However, with the development of Unraid, the cache pool is no longer just a caching function, but also serves as a storage array. With the introduction of ZFS support in the cache pool in version 6.12, I believe it is necessary to make some changes to the naming of the cache. Cache is a very clear and unambiguous term in the fields of computer science, architecture, and software development, and it refers to providing high-performance IO or temporary storage space for storage systems. I think it is more reasonable to use hot data and cold data to distinguish between the cache pool and the array. Hot data is used to store active or high-performance data, while cold data is used to store read-only, infrequently accessed, or low-performance data. Additionally, using high-performance space and low-performance space to differentiate is also reasonable. This is a naming issue.

Edited April 24, 20233 yr by pteromyini

The naming of pools is whatever the user wants them to be.

2 minutes ago, itimpi said:

The naming of pools is whatever the user wants them to be.

This is indeed correct, but the usage of cache in the current version of unraid is not the well-known "cache" as many people think, which can cause confusion for new users.