Hello Unraid Forum, 

 

my Unraid server runs as media and gaming machine. The goal is to have the most storage/redundancy/gaming performance as possible.

 

Current setup: 4TB Parity with Array devices: 2x 2TB and 1x 4TB

+ zfs cache pool with: 3x m2 ssd.

 

Currently it bothers me that all 3 of the array devices bring a new zfs pool with 3 mount points. And the caching system is annoying in my eyes with managing mover and bigger datasets in the cache. 

 

The best configuration that suits my case is from my thinking zfs: raid-z1 with L2ARC caching. So plan would be to replace the 2x 2TB with another 4TB so I got 3 of them and then put them to raid-z1 and use all ssd's as L2ARC.

I would gain: much more read speeds on all shares?

and loose: write speed on cache shares + ability to remove/add disks however I want?

 

 

Everything is googled together. I am not an expert with managing/optimizing storage pools. Please let me know if my plans are crap or maybe let me know what you peoples are using. 🤔

 

 

Regards

Ojun

 

 

 

 

Edited October 22, 20241 yr by Ojun

There are quite a few setups you could do. I would normlay suggest runing the NVME in a XFS on the array and the High/Large TB as zfs raidz1 / mirror for redundancy and speed.

Before the ability to remove the array, I would say have your faster devices there as a xfs setup as the array. With the ability now to have 0 array devices.

Since you are in beta and are able to ditch the unraid array all together. I would recommend this setup.

Array Disabled. Go pool Devices Only with ZFS...


So setup your NVME as a
3x m.2 as a zfs raidz1 for speed and space
2x 2TB as a ZFS Mirror
1x 4tb as cache

You can then use plugins such as user script and appdata backup to copy and move items off for backups auto-magicaly. and if a disk in the zfs array die, the data isn't lost and easily recoverable with a replacement add to the missing disk in the pool device and resliver the new HD.

The NVME array should store and be used for your VMs and Docker Application Data
The 2xMirror disk can be you bigger media libaray data and used for NAS and Main shares.
The 1x4TB as the cache disk as ?btrfs? and be the main backup for the appdata folder (due to default docker templates) and data location for plugin or user script to copy/rsync and make a location for back data to as a active parity disk between both pools.

You just have to remember to go into the share folder after coming up with datasets in zfs on the main page.
So once all datasets are made.. In Shares be sure to set storage location before using them.

Hear are some other example that I run.:

 

Go to shares, click the dataset name and under 

Chose your Primary Storage pool.
 

Edited October 23, 20241 yr by bmartino1
grammar/speling

best practices aside. As in the end it comes down to how you want to interact with it and what you want it to do.

as one should follow the 321 backup rule or 221 ...
https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatabackup/definition/3-2-1-Backup-Strategy#:~:text=The basic concept of the,data is sent off site.

Recommend plugins I would have you use and install:

ZFS plugins.

Snapshots to see zfs snapshots and btrfs snapshots...

 

General unraid Must Haves



Backup Tools and Utilities:

Additional Add-on Systems (Docker compose and LXC):



I also recommend running some user script at first array startup:


The Main scirp to run is more for ZFS and creating snapshots for shadow copy backups within ZFS.

#!/bin/bash

#v0.3 - Updated for new datasets and recursive snapshots
########################simple-snapshot-zfs#######################
###################### User Defined Options ######################

# List of ZFS datasets
DATASETS=("vm-zfs/Backups")
#"zfsPoolName/Datasetname"

# Set Number of Snapshots to Keep
SNAPSHOT_QTY=5

###### Don't change below unless you know what you're doing ######
##################################################################

timestamp=$(date "+%Y-%m-%d-%H:%M")
echo "Starting Snapshot ${timestamp}"
echo "_____________________________________________________________"

# Function to create snapshot if there is changed data
create_snapshot_if_changed() {
  local DATASET="$1"
  local WRITTEN
  WRITTEN=$(zfs get -H -o value written "${DATASET}")

  if [[ "${WRITTEN}" != "0" ]]; then
    local TIMESTAMP
    TIMESTAMP="$(date '+%Y-%m-%d-%H%M')"
    # Use -r for recursive snapshots
    zfs snapshot -r "${DATASET}@${TIMESTAMP}"
    echo "Recursive snapshot created: ${DATASET}@${TIMESTAMP}"
  else
    echo "No changes detected in ${DATASET}. No snapshot created."
  fi
}

# Function to prune snapshots
prune_snapshots() {
  local DATASET="$1"
  local KEEP="${SNAPSHOT_QTY}"
  
  local SNAPSHOTS=( $(zfs list -t snapshot -o name -s creation -r "${DATASET}" | grep "^${DATASET}@") )
  local SNAPSHOTS_COUNT=${#SNAPSHOTS[@]}

  echo "Total snapshots for ${DATASET}: ${SNAPSHOTS_COUNT}"

  local SNAPSHOTS_SPACE
  SNAPSHOTS_SPACE=$(zfs get -H -o value usedbysnapshots "${DATASET}")
  echo "Space used by snapshots for ${DATASET}: ${SNAPSHOTS_SPACE}"

  if [[ ${SNAPSHOTS_COUNT} -gt ${KEEP} ]]; then
    local TO_DELETE=$((SNAPSHOTS_COUNT - KEEP))
    for i in "${SNAPSHOTS[@]:0:${TO_DELETE}}"; do
      zfs destroy "${i}"
      echo "Deleted snapshot: ${i}"
      echo "_____________________________________________________________"
    done
  else
   echo "_____________________________________________________________"
  fi
}

# Iterate over each dataset and call the functions
for dataset in "${DATASETS[@]}"; do
  create_snapshot_if_changed "${dataset}"
  prune_snapshots "${dataset}"
done

echo "----------------------------Done!----------------------------"

Using snapshot plugin, one can investigate and inspect.


These are my min best practices. I will gladly help where I can.

Edited October 23, 20241 yr by bmartino1

还是希望自动快照能集成在gui中