Dear unraid community. When setting up a new Unraid system today, which route would you go on this hardware and usecase?

 

Ugreen DXP2800 (2-bay NAS)

• Intel N100
• 16GB RAM
• 2x 16TB nas-optimized HDD
• 2x 256GB nas-optimized m2 SSD
• + 1 external consumer 2TB SSD (USB3.2 Gen2)

 

Usecase: media download, storage and server

To be installed:

• Docker: Jellyfin, Sonarr/Radarr, Jellyseerr
• Docker: sabnzbd (on high speed 1gig fibre)
• Docker: Duplicacy (for WAN backups)
• VM: Proxmox Backup Server for another proxmox machine in LAN

 

Main Question:

 

Route A) ZFS mirrors with new Unraid 7RC

Route B) Btrfs array setup with either Unraid 6 latest or 7RC

 

And would you use one of the internal m.2 ssd as cache or mirror both to run apps only and use the external ssd as cache?

 

What is the best for overall performance and stability? There are max. 2 people using it in parallel streaming with occasional transcoding.

I tried already ZFS but experienced CPU as bottle neck.

Would unraid array be less CPU consuming?

I do not think that I need much of the ZFS advantages. But I am not entirely sure.

 

How would you do it today with the knowledge and experience from the past?

 

Obrigado

 

 

20 minutes ago, chickennuggets said:

Route A) ZFS mirrors with new Unraid 7RC

I would go with this, zfs mirrors have better read performance due to striping the devices, and are good at recovering from a dropped device.

And don't use USB for assigned devices. 

 

 

@JorgeB What do you mean by 'striping' in this case? I would like to setup both HDD as mirrored zfs, not a stripe.. if that makes sense.

 

@trurl You mean the external SSD as cache? I know it`s not ideal. But what are the risks? I would 'only' use it for big transfers on the nas, including small backup chunks, so that the HDD don`t become a bottleneck for writing speeds and the mover can move everything over at night sequentially, which should also benefit the health of the HDD in the long run, afaik at least. Not a pro. Again, are there some relevant risks due to less stable usb compared to m2?

Thanks, you two!  

22 minutes ago, chickennuggets said:

What do you mean by 'striping' in this case?

It uses both mirror members as a stripe for better performance during reads, writes are obviously still limited by single device speed.

Thanks! I`ll give it a shot. Any other '10 things I wish I knew about Unraid when I was a noob' that are on top your mind?  

A single disk pool as cache that experienced a disconnect due to USB would not be as bad as some other use cases.