New box, wait for zfs release or use parity array?

[travvy87]

Hi All

 

tried to make the title as best as i could for a title, needing some advice. i've done lots of google-fu but still struggling to comprehand a few things.

 

Essentially i'm building a new box, it will have 4 x 16tb drives, along with a 500gb ssd for cache; and i don't expect to expand for a very long time.

 

I saw the notes for the new rc with zfs support and i'm trying to figure out the best way to install unraid. 

From my understanding i can have the normal way of making an array of 3 drives + 1 parity, this way should allow drives to spin down when not being used?

then with the zfs pool i can make it have raidz which will have 1 redundant drive but it will have better read/write speeds.

 

Is that pretty much the only differences? use cases will just mainly be pihole, plex and torrents. the only user will be myself so there will be long periods of no activity.

 

i understand also if i go for the array with the parity drive, it's best to configure it all then unassign the parity drive. copy over all my data to it, then turn on the parity drive? is there anything else i should do before/after if i go this route?

 

if i go zfs route, is there anything that needs to be done before/after?

[itimpi]

One thing to consider is if you will want to add additional drives.   This is not easy with ZFS pools, but is easy for array drives (whatever file system you use).  
 

There is also the option of using btrfs for a pool which has many of the advantages of xfs but has the big advantage over ZFS that it is easy to add drives and/or dynamically change the raid profile used.   The possible downside of btrfs is that is considered slightly less resilient to failure if you have hardware issues.

[travvy87]

51 minutes ago, itimpi said:

One thing to consider is if you will want to add additional drives.   This is not easy with ZFS pools, but is easy for array drives (whatever file system you use).  
 

There is also the option of using btrfs for a pool which has many of the advantages of xfs but has the big advantage over ZFS that it is easy to add drives and/or dynamically change the raid profile used.   The possible downside of btrfs is that is considered slightly less resilient to failure if you have hardware issues.

Lets assume that I wont be adding additional drives. By the time i need to i'll probably have a new box.

 

I've done more googling since this post and think I might have found a way to do what i'm after.

If i use a flash drive that i wont use and make that an array (as unraid needs an array to function)

then set the 4 drives to be a zfs pool, i'll still be able to do everything i need? creating shares (or datasets if i understand it correctly) and having my media and files accessable via my windows PC etc

then i make another pool with the SSD for the appdata and dockers to live on.

 

does that sound feasable? i'm interested in the benefits zfs provides of redundancy, bitrot protection and the raidz performance - if i understand it right (parity checks on 4x16tb drives doesn't appeal to me)

 

i really want to go with unraid instead of truenas scale because of all the guides and video's i've watched make it relatively easy to configure and setup, i just need to sus out the starting point.
 

[itimpi]

1 minute ago, travvy87 said:

Lets assume that I wont be adding additional drives. By the time i need to i'll probably have a new box.

 

I've done more googling since this post and think I might have found a way to do what i'm after.

If i use a flash drive that i wont use and make that an array (as unraid needs an array to function)

then set the 4 drives to be a zfs pool, i'll still be able to do everything i need? creating shares (or datasets if i understand it correctly) and having my media and files accessable via my windows PC etc

then i make another pool with the SSD for the appdata and dockers to live on.

 

does that sound feasable? i'm interested in the benefits zfs provides of redundancy, bitrot protection and the raidz performance - if i understand it right (parity checks on 4x16tb drives doesn't appeal to me)

 

i really want to go with unraid instead of truenas scale because of all the guides and video's i've watched make it relatively easy to configure and setup, i just need to sus out the starting point.
 

Yes - what you mention is the way to go if you want a ZFS array.    Just make sure any shares are set to only be on the ZFS array (or the SSD one for appdata/dockers).  
 

At some point in the future (maybe in the 6.13 release) the requirement to have that dummy flash drive in the array will be removed as the existing array type just becomes another pool type you can use.

[travvy87]

7 minutes ago, itimpi said:

Yes - what you mention is the way to go if you want a ZFS array.    Just make sure any shares are set to only be on the ZFS array (or the SSD one for appdata/dockers).  
 

At some point in the future (maybe in the 6.13 release) the requirement to have that dummy flash drive in the array will be removed as the existing array type just becomes another pool type you can use.

 

Awesome, thank you for the advice and assisting.