I have tried to ask around and never get a straight answer except I should switch to truenas, but its many reasons why I do not want truenas (for example no bare docker).

 

Im an early adopter so of course I jumped on the ZFS thing with 4x u.2 drives in a zfs raidz pool for docker, vm, databases etc, and 8x 10 tb in a raidz pool for long term.

 

of course not using the array is not how unraid is intended, but im not sure if diverging this much is clever.

 

I have the chance to move things around now so I would like some input what to do.

 

if you guys had access to 4x 8tb U.2 drives (yes u2, enterprise nvme in ssd size), 8x 10TB and 4x 2TB enterprise nvme, all on SAS cards.

 

would you do arrays on all, locking databases etc to the u2 and use the nvme for cache?

 

or would you drop the array and just use pools?

 

would you use zfs in the array? (What benefit does that even give?)

 

so any thoughts?

 

Attached is an example of the current layout 

 

I would use only pools for much better performance and TRIM support, my two mains servers have multiple pools and no array, that's not a problem as long as it works for you.

8 hours ago, JorgeB said:

I would use only pools for much better performance and TRIM support, my two mains servers have multiple pools and no array, that's not a problem as long as it works for you.

One of the issues I think is the extra power use with pools that never spin down to take into consideration too

For flash devices don't think that matters much, but you can take it into account.