Unraid 6.12.6 -> All SSD Array

[MeowMeow]

Hi friends,
I'm noob when it comes to Raid and Unraid. At the moment my array configuration is like this:

 

1 SSD Parity

2 SSD Disks

1 NVME Cache

 

I'm reading everywhere that I shouldn't use parity with SSD due to problems with trimming, also reading since version 6.12 things should be normal?

 

My SSDs are all Samsung EVO and QVO.

Should I ditch the parity and use that device as normal disk?

Should I convert my configuration to ZFS?

By the way, in the scheduler the trim is disabled.

 

Please guide me

Edited December 5, 2023 by MeowMeow

[JorgeB]

I would recommend creating a raidz zfs pool instead, you can use an old flash drive for the required array device.

[MeowMeow]

15 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

I would recommend creating a raidz zfs pool instead, you can use an old flash drive for the required array device.

Sorry I didn't get this part. an old flash drive?

Edited December 5, 2023 by MeowMeow

[itimpi]

9 minutes ago, MeowMeow said:

Sorry I didn't get this part. an old flash drive?

There is currently a requirement that there is at least 1 drive in the main Unraid array.    If you are going to create a ZFS pool as your main storage and store no data on the main array then you can use any old flash drive (of the sort used to boot Unraid) to satisfy this requirement.   In a future Unraid release this requirement is expected to disappear.

[MAM59]

8 minutes ago, MeowMeow said:

Sorry I didn't get this part. an old flash drive?

He means just an old worn out USB stick that lies around somewhere.

This is, because UNRAID needs an "array" to function, but it does not care how big and of what disks this "array" is made of.

Its just a dummy allowing VMs and dockers to start.

 

Put all your data onto that raidz zfs pool instead, it will take care about parity and trimming itself.

 

[MeowMeow]

5 minutes ago, MAM59 said:

Put all your data onto that raidz zfs pool instead, it will take care about parity and trimming itself.

 

Ah great, thanks.

[MeowMeow]

Thanks to everyone, I converted all my drives to ZFS (Cache and other drives) and tried the ZFS Pool with raidz, but revert the settings to unraid array because the mover doesn't support other pools at the moment.

Somewhere in the forum I read in the 6.13 might this thing get released an normal unraid array becomes another pool

[itimpi]

35 minutes ago, MeowMeow said:

mover doesn't support other pools at the moment.

I think that if you are using a ZFS raidz pool then performance is normally good enough that there is no need to cache writes to that pool and thus no need to get mover involved at all.

[MeowMeow]

2 hours ago, itimpi said:

I think that if you are using a ZFS raidz pool then performance is normally good enough that there is no need to cache writes to that pool and thus no need to get mover involved at all.

Are there any benchmarks showing the perf difference?

[MeowMeow]

56 minutes ago, MeowMeow said:

Are there any benchmarks showing the perf difference?

To answer my own question, I don't have much of data and so it's easy for me to switch between to check.

Copy from NVME to SSD array, it was like 80 MB average with unblance
But from NVME to ZFS pool, it's above 800MB, at least 10x faster!

Compression it's also enabled

[MeowMeow]

I still come back with my default configuration with XFS and Parity. I'll check things later again.