Hey everyone!

So, I've had some experience with extending ZFS pools in the past, and let me tell you, it's not always a walk in the park. There are definitely some limitations and boundaries you've got to navigate. That's why I'm reaching out to get some advice on my current setup.

 

Here's what I'm working with right now:

• 3 x 8TB disks (plus 1 for parity)  ZFS.
• A cache made up of 4 disks.

 

Today, I'm getting my hands on 2 x 1TB NVMe and 3 x 16TB disks.

My goal? I want to merge them into an array with 4 x 8TB and 2 x 16TB, throwing in one of those 16TB disks as parity.

 

But here's the kicker: I'm torn between sticking with ZFS or making the leap to BTRFS. What do you think?

 

This setup is going to serve as my automated download station, powered by Docker containers, while also handling regular file services, acting as a backup target, AND doubling as a Plex server for 10 users.

 

Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

For the moment, and between the two, I would recommend btrfs for the array, since there's a known performance issue with zfs writes, this does not affect zfs pools.

Thanks for the feedback!

 

So, if I understand correctly, I should transfer all the disks to a new btrfs array.

I believe the easiest approach would be to create a new btrfs array and transfer the data there.

Finally, adding the parity at the end would be the last step due to the speed of the data transfer.

31 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

And between the two

would you recomend something completly different?

For the typical user we usually recommend xfs, but if you want the btrfs/zfs extra features, like checksums, snapshots, I would go with btrfs foo the array, that's what I use myself.

ok thanks.

just one last question... i will start now with the movement of the data.

 

The plan was to move disk by disk, which means I'm currently running unbalanced to transfer all files from disk 1 to disk 4. Once disk 1 is empty, I'll reformat it to BTRFS and repeat this process until all disks are on BTRFS.

Is this the correct approach for migrating like this?

I'm asking because I encountered the message "Unmountable: Unsupported or no file system." This should change once all disks are using BTRFS, correct?

 

26 minutes ago, quei said:

I'm asking because I encountered the message "Unmountable: Unsupported or no file system." This should change once all disks are using BTRFS, correct?

I assume disk4 is new and unformatted? If yes that message will disappear after you format it, with any filesystem.