new zfs setup

[Dang_I.T.]

I'm still new to unraid and trying to figure out the best way to setup my drives to run zfs. 

 

Current setup: 4 4TB drives, 2 1TB drives, 1 500GB nvme ssd.

Note: At some point I plan on swapping out the 1TB drives for larger capacity drives.

 

Opt1: 1 4TB parity drive, 3 4TB array drives, 2 1TB array drives, 500GB nvme drive as cache

Opt2: All drives in pool, except the 500GB nvme as a cache. running as raidz

 

My question is which of these options would be better for my setup? Should I just exclude the 1TB drives and add the larger drivers to the pool in future? Is there anything I'm failing to consider with these setups or am I going at this completely wrong?

Edited June 20, 2023 by Dang_I.T.

[Dang_I.T.]

Sorry to bump the post. Just looking for any feedback or thoughts!

[JorgeB]

On 6/20/2023 at 11:24 AM, Dang_I.T. said:

Opt2: All drives in pool, except the 500GB nvme as a cache. running as raidz

This will only give you around 5TB usable.

[trallae]

Also please note, as far as I understand, that even if you use only one size drives (to get the most out oof the space)  UnRAid ZFS doesn't support running all drivers in one big ZFS pool so to say.

You still need to have i non ZFS pool driver in your "array".  Now you can have this drive formatted as ZFS and you can have a parity drive with it but it sure looks like you cant go with just a ZFS raidz pool.

 

As far as I understand the "array" in the case of UnRaid is a name for a sort of wrapper that start end stops services , disk shares and application alike.

If you run with just a raidz pool the Unraid "array" wont start , you can of course start your zfs pool and your applications manually but it sure looks like UnRaid is not built for that scenario.

[itimpi]

On 6/21/2023 at 12:25 PM, trallae said:

Also please note, as far as I understand, that even if you use only one size drives (to get the most out oof the space)  UnRAid ZFS doesn't support running all drivers in one big ZFS pool so to say.

You still need to have i non ZFS pool driver in your "array".  Now you can have this drive formatted as ZFS and you can have a parity drive with it but it sure looks like you cant go with just a ZFS raidz pool.

 

As far as I understand the "array" in the case of UnRaid is a name for a sort of wrapper that start end stops services , disk shares and application alike.

If you run with just a raidz pool the Unraid "array" wont start , you can of course start your zfs pool and your applications manually but it sure looks like UnRaid is not built for that scenario.

It is legacy that there is a requirement of at least 1 drive in the array, but there is nothing stopping it being a small flash drive.   It is intended that this restriction will be removed in a future release.