ZFS, Licencing & Disk Layouts

[boomam]

Good morning everyone!  

In preparation for 6.12 and official ZFS support, I am mere minutes away from pressing 'buy' on some parts to finally realize my long-term goal with my system, all SSD.  However, I could do with some last minute advice.

 

What I am looking for is some advice & views, as the impact of ZFS and the new pools/cache/array layout for 6.12 isn't clear to me, at least in how it impacts what I want to do.

 

My plan is to upgrade my current system - 

• Ryzen 5700G
• 32Gb RAM (4x 8Gb)
• Asrock X570M Pro (no PCI-E slots or M.2's currently in use)
• 3x 4Tb SATA HDD's (Array)
• 2x 1Tb SATA SSD's (Cache)
• 2x 256Gb SATA SSD's (Docker Dir)
• 1x 512Gb USB SSD (Log data)

 

To add - 

• 1x LSI 9207-8i PCI-E x8 HBA
• 4x 1Tb SATA MX500 SSDs (matching the two existing 1Tb drives that I have)

 

The HBA would go in my secondary PCI-E x16 slot, which is electrically 8x.

Doing this would retain the PCI-E x1 slot for future uses, and would change the config of the main PCI-Ex16 to be 8x too, which would do for a 2x m.2/10G card if needed.

 

Software configuration wise - 

My ideal plan, based on if I've understood the ZFS support correctly, is a disk layout of

• 1x ZFS Primary Storage, Z1, 6x 1Tb MX500's as my main storage
• 1x 'Traditional' Array, 3x HDDs as archive storage - ideally this would almost never spin up.
• 1x Docker Dir Cache, 256Gb Drives

 

Overall, the plan would be to install the hardware, configure the ZFS pool, change the shares to use the ZFS as the primary storage, run mover, done.

 

However, I am unsure on - 

1. If this configuration (share/setup wise) would work - clarity needed on ZFS implementation/share usage.
2. What the Unraid license considers to be a attached drive when it comes to ZFS - I dont think it counts the 'unattached' drive I'm using for logging for example
3. If the LSI 9207-8i is a decent choice, as the performance numbers here, suggests 500-600 MB/s performance, which isn't clear if that's per-drive, or for every drive attached.  I did a quick google for some perf numbers, seems to scale well to the max of the PCI-E interface. 
   Questions remain on if its any good though, as in, compatibility issues with Unraid, etc.

Thanks in advance for your views and for reading this wall of text. 😛

Edited May 24, 2023 by boomam
Formatting update

[itimpi]

1 hour ago, boomam said:

What the Unraid license considers to be a attached drive when it comes to ZFS - I dont think it counts the 'unattached' drive I'm using for logging for example

All storage devices except the boot drive that are attached when starting the array count towards the licence limit regardless of whether Unraid is using them or not.  Removable drives can be added after the array is started but if that would take you over the limit then they need removing before you next reboot or stop/start the array.

[boomam]

1 hour ago, itimpi said:

All storage devices except the boot drive that are attached when starting the array count towards the licence limit regardless of whether Unraid is using them or not.  Removable drives can be added after the array is started but if that would take you over the limit then they need removing before you next reboot or stop/start the array.

Thanks.

Currently on a Plus license, which allows me upto 12 devices.

Based on my plan, I would be at 13 devices.  

However, I can short term remove the USB log data drive to get me 'in spec', medium-term i may just remove the dedicated docker dir SSDs, too.