Storage Array and Pool recommendations

[KZ7]

Hi, I'm in the process of upgrading my Unraid server to new hardware. I'm going from an i7 4790k to a Ryzen 3900. I have some new storage available and I want to reconfigure my Array and create new pools.

Current Storage:

• Cache Pool: 2x 256MB SSD (BTRFS mirrored)
• Array: 3x 14TB HDD, 2x 8TB HDD. 44TB Capacity

New storage available:

• 2x 2TB NVMe
• 1x 14TB HDD
• 1x 8TB HDD

My main uses cases are:

• Home Assistant VM
• Plex/media storage
• Backups
  • Windows Back
  • Time machine
  • Photographs and Documents  (encrypted?)
  • Google Photos sync
    • Deduped with my own photo file mgmt
• Network file share
• A few other dockers and Linux VMs.

I think the unRAID array can handle media storage and file sharing. What I want to do differently is to start making use of deduplication, compression and snapshotting for my backups. I want snapshotting for my appdata (docker + VMs).

What I want to figure out how to how to nest use my NVMe drives. I want my appdata to be entirely on NVMe and then use any remaining space to accelerate file sharing and backups. Redundancy is not important for some appdata, but it is for the rest (including backups and file shares). Does ZFS or BTRFS let me do any of this better?  It seems like ZFS vs Btrfs seems to be less technical as they seem to be even on features. (FWIW I have a lot more experience with btrfs - my main dev machine has a single btrfs pool with multiple disks).

I'd like to get some recommendation on how to structure my Array and Pools and whether to go with btrfs or zfs. I think the unRAID integration is probably more of a selling point than the filesystem it self.

Thanks for reading!