ZFS building and need advice

[Bmoney]

I have a great base system for my file server. 

Dual Xeons 2.66Ghz

48gig ecc ram

6 Sata ports

8 Sas ports

I want to add 6 4TB hard drives

also 8 2TB hard drive. 

Now I was wondering I currently have some 4tb drive in Raidz2 and some 1tb drive in raidz1 in 2 different zpools. 

What I want to do is to put 8 2tb drive in 4 different 4tb vdevs then add those to the other 4tb drive in raidz2 for a total of about 32tb of redundant storage. Is this good I not sure how to create those vdevs though.

[dalekphalm]

14 minutes ago, Bmoney said:

I have a great base system for my file server. 

Dual Xeons 2.66Ghz

48gig ecc ram

6 Sata ports

8 Sas ports

I want to add 6 4TB hard drives

also 8 2TB hard drive. 

Now I was wondering I currently have some 4tb drive in Raidz2 and some 1tb drive in raidz1 in 2 different zpools. 

What I want to do is to put 8 2tb drive in 4 different 4tb vdevs then add those to the other 4tb drive in raidz2 for a total of about 32tb of redundant storage. Is this good I not sure how to create those vdevs though.

Can you explain what this server will actually be doing? Because if you're just using it as a file server, your RAM is massive overkill. Your CPU's are both overkill too, unless you plan to also run a Plex Server, or something else?

 

Can you clarify exactly how you want your setup to work?

 

You want to create four 2x 2TB vdevs (do you want these in striped or mirrored?) - I assume striped.

 

You then want to take these 4x 4TB vdevs, and use them with the 6x 4TB HDD's, to create an effective 10x 4TB RAIDZ2?

 

This is a bad idea. You are adding a lot of extra weakness to this pool by combining the mirrored vdevs into the large RAIDZ2 array.

 

You're better off doing two separate RAIDZ pools:

8x 2TB RAIDZ2 (Total Storage: 16TB; Effective Storage: 12TB)

6x 4TB RAIDZ2 (Total Storage: 24TB; Effective Storage: 16TB)

 

If you for some reason need to combine the total amount of storage into a single "drive", you should do so via other means.

 

You can even run ZFS with a Cluster capable File System, though there's certainly more work involved.

[Bmoney]

10 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Can you explain what this server will actually be doing? Because if you're just using it as a file server, your RAM is massive overkill. Your CPU's are both overkill too, unless you plan to also run a Plex Server, or something else?

 

Can you clarify exactly how you want your setup to work?

 

You want to create four 2x 2TB vdevs (do you want these in striped or mirrored?) - I assume striped.

 

You then want to take these 4x 4TB vdevs, and use them with the 6x 4TB HDD's, to create an effective 10x 4TB RAIDZ2?

 

This is a bad idea. You are adding a lot of extra weakness to this pool by combining the mirrored vdevs into the large RAIDZ2 array.

 

You're better off doing two separate RAIDZ pools:

8x 2TB RAIDZ2 (Total Storage: 16TB; Effective Storage: 12TB)

6x 4TB RAIDZ2 (Total Storage: 24TB; Effective Storage: 16TB)

 

If you for some reason need to combine the total amount of storage into a single "drive", you should do so via other means.

 

You can even run ZFS with a Cluster capable File System, though there's certainly more work involved.

That was why I was asking (yes this is also a plex server) I know even in a raidz2 pool it would take 3 drive from 3 vdevs to lose everything not to mention the 4tb drives. The only thing else is I want to upgrade my network to 10gbe then I will be look for some SSD cache for these share drives. Because that configuration max write speeds will be about 400MBPS and I hope that SSD caching will help me saturated that connection.

[dalekphalm]

5 minutes ago, Bmoney said:

That was why I was asking (yes this is also a plex server) I know even in a raidz2 pool it would take 3 drive from 3 vdevs to lose everything not to mention the 4tb drives. The only thing else is I want to upgrade my network to 10gbe then I will be look for some SSD cache for these share drives. Because that configuration max write speeds will be about 400MBPS and I hope that SSD caching will help me saturated that connection.

In my opinion, I would entirely eliminate that particular setup from consideration - not worth the risk of failure at all.

 

It would take 3 drive failures only if 2 of the drives happened to be 2TB ones from the mirrored vdev's - you're still at risk of a 2 drive total failure, if, say, 2x 4TB drives bite it.

 

You are of course welcome to do this setup anyway, but I would still just separate the 2 types of drives into their own pools for better tolerance.