ZFS: Create Pool of ZFS drives or just add to array?

[yoleska]

Hey there, first time posting and working with Unraid, so be gentle. 

 

I just built my first Unraid server.  I am on the 6.12 rc7 build cause I just like to live dangerously and it seems stable now. I have 4x 16TB drives that currently going through pre-clear.  When they are done, I am curious about ZFS.  Do I add the drives to the array and set the type to ZFS?  Or do I create a pool specifically for the drives and set type to ZFS for each one?  Do I then add the pool to the array, or is the array just not used at that point?  

 

Also for cache drives/pool.  I have two (1 nvme and 1 ssd) that I wanted to use for cache/vms, etc..  Do I add them to the same pool with 2 drives, or each have their own pool?  I assume they don't need to be part of the ZFS pool, or do they?  Still learning, much to digest. 

 

Thanks! 

 

[JorgeB]

Either has advantages and disadvantages, main ones are in this post:

https://forums.unraid.net/topic/131857-soon™️-612-series/?do=findComment&comment=1243850

 

 

[yoleska]

Great, that's a good explanation.  So the term "Array" probably is going away (from one of the linked posts on that thread). 

 

What about the cache drive question?  I don't think those would be part of the ZFS pool, but I assume they would be ZFS.  Would both disks be in 1 pool, or should I split them up.  I don't plan on doing mirroring or Raidz between them - just having two different locations for hi/low speed apps. 

 

[JorgeB]

9 minutes ago, yoleska said:

I don't think those would be part of the ZFS pool, but I assume they would be ZFS.

They can be zfs or not, and yes you can have separate pools.