New User: Fresh Unraid Setup

[Galooch]

Hi all,

 

As a (soon-to-be) former Synology user, I am currently in the process of planning out my next NAS system and Unraid is currently at the top of my list.  I am currently awaiting my new system parts to arrive.  In the meantime, I have been doing a lot of research to best plan my filesystem and storage layout, and like most, have focused on zfs vs xfs use cases to see how and where it might be best to use.  Below are my fairly standard use cases along with my general plan and initial reasoning, along with a few questions.  I would appreciate any feedback on this setup and if there suggestions to improve.  Thanks in advance and excited to join the Unraid journey with everyone.

 

Use: standard media streaming, dockers, and light gaming VM usage
Case: I am using a Fractal Define 7 which can house 14x3.5" and 4xSSDs.  My motherboard has space for 3NVME

 

1. Unraid Array (xfs) - 11 drives - primary use case is for non-essential large media files, minimal writes, periodic reads; potentially use to house additional copy of more critical data if I can automate that.

• 18TB - parity1
• 18TB - parity2
• 16TBx3
• 10TBx1
• 8TBx3
• 4TBX1
• 2TBx1

 

2. ZPool (zfs - raidz1) - 3 drives - primary use case is for more critical data such as documents, family photos/videos etc.; this woudl also let me take advantage of zfs compression unlike my media files that may have a more limited benefit.  The current size of these critical file is around 2TB so I have some room for growth for now.

• 4TBx3

 

3. Cache (zfs?) - from my reading, this cache is where I will likely keep my VMs and Docker containers/appdata. 

Cache is where I need a bit of guidance on the best way to configure things to start off:

Does having both an Unraid array for media, and a smaller zpool for data impact my cache choice? Would they both leverage it? 

Since I have a combination of a new NVME and some older/smaller SSDs,  I'm not sure the best way to start considering I will have the space to add 2 NVMEs and 2SSDs down the road.  What is the best way to use my current remaining discs today and what might might upgrade plans be given the extra slots?

 

• NVME A: 1TB
• NVME B: N/A
• SSD A: 250GB
• SSD B: 60GB
• SSD C: N/A
• SSD D: N/A

 

Again, thanks for reading this far and happy to join the Unraid community! 

Edited September 19 by Galooch

[trurl]

NVME A should be plenty for caching and for Docker/VM.

 

SSD A and SSD B aren't significant capacity IMO

[Galooch]

Thanks for the quick response @trurl.  Given the small size of the SSDs and your suggestion, its not good idea to create a zfs or btfs cache pool with them and the nvme?  I assume that those small drives would limit the nvme in various ways.  In that case, would my best path towards cache redundancy be to simply get another 1TB nvme and do a zfs mirror? 

 

In the end, this would free up the 4 SSD slots for future use as necessary.  Perhaps in the future, I could create move my critical zfs pool data over to an a larger all-ssd zpool and free up those 3.5 slots when the media library requires it in my unraid array, if that makes sense...unless there may be another use case for those future SSDs.

[trurl]

57 minutes ago, Galooch said:

another 1TB nvme and do a zfs mirror

Yes