Should I run a SSD AND a NVME?

[SPOautos]

I have finished putting together my small home server. I have Unraid setup on the flash drive and have a quick question before installing the flash drive and starting to configure.

 

I have 4 6TB hard drives that read/write pretty fast 150-200MB/s and each has 128GB cache. And also a 500GB NVME Samsung drive. I also have a older 250GB SSD that is currently in a USB enclosure and not attached to the server in any way but I have been thinking about removing it from the enclosure and adding it.  I am mostly using this to store home files, work files, HT media.  I'm not transferring massive files around daily....I will initially but then it will mostly just sit there and we save stuff and work on things here and there. Watch a movie or listen to music that's stored it, ect. The most taxing is that I'm going to set up a Windows VM for occasional gaming.

 

With that usage would it be good to have the NVME and the SSD installed or is that a waste?  If I don't install the SSD I will continue using it as a usb attached device to transfer files from other computers to the server and things like that....which is pretty nice to have so going back and forth with it.

 

Thanks!

 

 

Edited August 24, 2020 by SPOautos

[trurl]

The latest beta has multiple pools for SSDs, etc. You could use the NVME as fast storage for dockers/VMs and use the SSD in a separate pool for normal caching. That is basically what I do except I have 256GB NVME as fast storage and 2x500GB SSD as cache.

 

2 hours ago, SPOautos said:

4 6TB hard drives that read/write pretty fast 150-200MB/s

You won't get all that speed with parity.

[SPOautos]

41 minutes ago, trurl said:

The latest beta has multiple pools for SSDs, etc. You could use the NVME as fast storage for dockers/VMs and use the SSD in a separate pool for normal caching. That is basically what I do except I have 256GB NVME as fast storage and 2x500GB SSD as cache.

 

You won't get all that speed with parity.

 

That is kind of what I was thinking but I wasn't sure if maybe I could use the NVME for both general caching and dockers/vm.   I really wont be doing a lot of different things at once....for instance I'm not going to be saving huge files while being in a VM playing video games. I've been reading a lot (and watching SpaceInvader videos) but I've never put together anything like this so still not exactly clear on the details of how everything works since I've never even seen it in person before.

 

Thanks so much for your input!

[trurl]

You could use the NVME as cache and not use the SSD. That will be plenty for both dockers/VMs and general caching. I don't recommend trying to combine the NVME and SSD into the same pool, mostly because they aren't the same size, but also because the SSD is probably slower.

 

[SPOautos]

17 minutes ago, trurl said:

You could use the NVME as cache and not use the SSD. That will be plenty for both dockers/VMs and general caching. I don't recommend trying to combine the NVME and SSD into the same pool, mostly because they aren't the same size, but also because the SSD is probably slower.

 

 

So I could use the NVME for dockers/VM's storage and for caching at the same time?  Please correct me if I'm wrong but caching is going to mostly be for saving documents, correct? Where it will save them fast in cache then write them to the HDD's at night?  Once I get all of my main data transferred to this computer I will rarely be saving anything that would need that. Most things will just be small documents or some pictures....maybe a dvd rip here or there. But with that small of a ongoing workload will it really help to do all of that using cache if my hdd's are fairly speedy? 

 

Really, I suppose given the small amount of ongoing file storage work that really means that if the NVME was pulling double duty, the cache side wouldn't be much of a workload so it would be nearly all used for the dockers/VM's. But 500GB isnt much now a days for gaming if the games would be stored on the NVME. How does that work? Does it just store the VM/dockers apps and data where they basically work off of the NVME but data such as the games themselves stored on my main HDD's?

 

Sorry for so many questions....I'm going to work on this tomorrow so trying to get it all straight in my head  lol

Edited August 24, 2020 by SPOautos

[trurl]

You control whether and how each user share uses cache.

 

The default for appdata, domains, system shares is cache-prefer, which means try to keep them on cache if there is room. This will give better performance for dockers/VMs since they won't be impacted by parity updates, and so they won't keep array disks spinning.

 

The default for all other user shares is cache-no, which means don't write to cache.. Changing a user share to cache-yes will write new files to cache then move them to the array according to the mover schedule.

[SPOautos]

Okay, so I can run the dockers/VM on the NVME and also do general caching with it as well.  Then in my VM's when I have apps in them such as a video game, would those be saved to the nvme or too the array? If everything in the VM like games has to save to the nvme, it may be too small. I would need a couple TB for all the games. Is there a way to section off part of the HDD's to store VM apps such as games?

[trurl]

Your VMs can have vdisks on the array, or they can access Unraid shares on its virtual network.

[SPOautos]

22 minutes ago, trurl said:

Your VMs can have vdisks on the array, or they can access Unraid shares on its virtual network.

Thank you so much for the info.....I think for now I will use only the NVME and keep my SSD as a external to move things around between computers. It sounds like the NVME can handle it all on its own....and much faster as well.

 

Quick question that is off topic from my original post but hopefully thats okay, dont want to clutter the forum up with too many stupid questions lol.....I have 4 hdd's. I just removed one of them and I plan on putting it in a USB enclosure to take it somewhere next week to load a bunch of data on it that I want to move to my Unraid server. Would I basically, load up this hard drive then plug it into the Unraid via usb, save all the data to the array, make sure the parity does its job, then wipe this hdd and add it to the array? That would give me 3 in the array and 1 parity. But would that be the best way to do it or can I just add the disk into the array with all the data and not even need to transfer the data?

Edited August 24, 2020 by SPOautos