Cache striping without BTRFS

[Jaster]

Hello Guys,

 

BTRFS keeps causing issues and I really want to get rid of that, however I use several small SSDs. Is there a way within unraid to stripe (or even have another array or raid) across multiple SSDs and use those as Cache drives?

A hardware controller would be an option, but it would cost more than a 4TB SSD.

 

Also; is there any other RAID option (planed?) that actually works for cache without using BTRFS?

[JorgeB]

1 minute ago, Jaster said:

Is there a way within unraid to stripe (or even have another array or raid) across multiple SSDs and use those as Cache drives?

Not without using a controller.

 

1 minute ago, Jaster said:

Also; is there any other RAID option (planed?) that actually works for cache without using BTRFS?

Possibly zfs in the future, but nothing confirmed yet.

 

You might also want to check your hardware, btrfs is especially susceptible to bad hardware, for example bad RAM, me and many other have been running multiple btrfs pools for years without any issues.

[Jaster]

As long as you don't hit any limitations, it runs fine. I had Raid 5 and 6 running and could never recover from a dead disk.

Even now, with pure striping i'm running into issues as it does not stipe all drives - it will show me the full capacity, but the actually available is one or two drives less. This causes "funny" issues like stopping VM, etc.

What I love about unraid is the flexibility when it comes to hardware, but btrfs seems to be very different and thats why I want and will get rid of it.

My solution is gonna be a the onboard raid controller  

[testdasi]

12 minutes ago, Jaster said:

My solution is gonna be a the onboard raid controller  

There is a ZFS plugin. I think Wendell (L1Tech) even installed Unraid with ZFS for Steve (GamerNexus).

[JorgeB]

35 minutes ago, Jaster said:

I had Raid 5 and 6 running and could never recover from a dead disk.

I always could, and did it many times, mostly for testing.

 

36 minutes ago, Jaster said:

Even now, with pure striping i'm running into issues as it does not stipe all drives

It will, but not equally if they aren't all the same size, but all space will be used, if that's not working for would need the diags to see why.

 

 

[Jaster]

3 hours ago, testdasi said:

There is a ZFS plugin. I think Wendell (L1Tech) even installed Unraid with ZFS for Steve (GamerNexus).

It's intressting, but I'll wait for a "full integration" into the unRaid cache.