ZFS storage drive for a Windows 10 PC

[Ununhexium116]

More storage = more gooder, and after a recent deal for some cheap old 1TB server drives (10 of them for 50$), I figured why the heck not add some storage to my desktop?

 

So I did a bit of research to figure out what the best option was for taking advantage of several drives for a reliable storage array, and ZFS seems to be the all around best (most capable).

 

Did a little bit of digging, and I learned that to best set up a ZFS array, I should get an HBA to connect my drives (to provide as low a level connection to the drive as possible). Doing a little bit more digging, I heard an LSI 9211-8i in IT mode was a solid choice. So I got myself one of them to add 8 SATA ports to complement my MBs 4, bringing me up to 12 so I can actually connect all the drives I have.

 

With that background set, my question becomes this: How do I set up a ZFS system, on the same box as a Windows 10 install? I keep seeing options along the lines of "Set up FreeBSD or Unraid and run Windows in a VM", but I use this box for gaming, so wouldn't a VM add overhead to Windows' access directly to the GPU, causing a bottleneck? Further, I know there are Intel chips and chipsets that support hardware level VM assignments, but I'm rocking a 4790k on a z97 board, which is not capable of the virtualization extensions (VT-d) which support low level I/O assignment. So would a bottleneck be created on the Windows VM for low level graphics interfacing, and could this also cause problems if FreeNAS or Unraid were used in a VM for ZFS? Also importantly, what would the RAM usage be like? I've heard a minimum of 8GB + 1GB/TB of storage added, so is it even worth it to try and game and run a ZFS on the same box? If I just need to hold on, save up for a new box, and run the drives off the Intel Rapid Storage Technology for a RAID to prevent data loss if one of the drives fail, then I can do that, but I was hoping to begin to dable in ZFS.

 

I hope I've made sense, if there are any further questions feel free to ask. I'm new to the whole ZFS and Virtualization arena.

[UrbanFreestyle]

Technically Freenas would not be the best option as you are not running ECC ram (just a guess) but then again i use it on a 4th gen i5 k series with 16gb non-ecc with no issues just don't run windows on it.

 

[AbsoluteFool]

20 minutes ago, Ununhexium116 said:

More storage = more gooder, and after a recent deal for some cheap old 1TB server drives (10 of them for 50$), I figured why the heck not add some storage to my desktop?

 

So I did a bit of research to figure out what the best option was for taking advantage of several drives for a reliable storage array, and ZFS seems to be the all around best (most capable).

 

Did a little bit of digging, and I learned that to best set up a ZFS array, I should get an HBA to connect my drives (to provide as low a level connection to the drive as possible). Doing a little bit more digging, I heard an LSI 9211-8i in IT mode was a solid choice. So I got myself one of them to add 8 SATA ports to complement my MBs 4, bringing me up to 12 so I can actually connect all the drives I have.

 

With that background set, my question becomes this: How do I set up a ZFS system, on the same box as a Windows 10 install? I keep seeing options along the lines of "Set up FreeBSD or Unraid and run Windows in a VM", but I use this box for gaming, so wouldn't a VM add overhead to Windows' access directly to the GPU, causing a bottleneck? Further, I know there are Intel chips and chipsets that support hardware level VM assignments, but I'm rocking a 4790k on a z97 board, which is not capable of the virtualization extensions (VT-d) which support low level I/O assignment. So would a bottleneck be created on the Windows VM for low level graphics interfacing, and could this also cause problems if FreeNAS or Unraid were used in a VM for ZFS? Also importantly, what would the RAM usage be like? I've heard a minimum of 8GB + 1GB/TB of storage added, so is it even worth it to try and game and run a ZFS on the same box? If I just need to hold on, save up for a new box, and run the drives off the Intel Rapid Storage Technology for a RAID to prevent data loss if one of the drives fail, then I can do that, but I was hoping to begin to dable in ZFS.

 

I hope I've made sense, if there are any further questions feel free to ask. I'm new to the whole ZFS and Virtualization arena.

What do you mean by "Server drives"?

Do you mean SAS drives? If this is SAS drives you can forget about putting them in SATA ports. You'll need a HBA that supports SAS drives.

[Ununhexium116]

9 minutes ago, AbsoluteFool said:

What do you mean by "Server drives"?

Do you mean SAS drives? If this is SAS drives you can forget about putting them in SATA ports. You'll need a HBA that supports SAS drives.

They're SATA drives, I said "Server" which was perhaps misleading. They're old enterprise grade Seagate drives, but came from a datacenter so I figured "Server" was appropriate.

[AbsoluteFool]

I see. Well, Windows in a VM is overall a bad idea. If you abselutely need Windows i'd use storage spaces and use what's available there.

 

Having Windows in a VM can lead to connectivity issues to services you use, for example games.

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 hours ago, UrbanFreestyle said:

Technically Freenas would not be the best option as you are not running ECC ram (just a guess) but then again i use it on a 4th gen i5 k series with 16gb non-ecc with no issues just don't run windows on it.

 

Freenas/zfs isn't any worse without ecc than any other filesystem. ECC is always better, but zfs doesn't need ecc more than any other filesystem.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Id stay away from zfs here. I d go with storage spaces. It has most of the same features as zfs, plus a few more(like tiereing, mixed raid arrays, easy drive addition and removal). It supports the same features like snapshots, dedup or compression, bitrot correction with refs. I don't see a reason to use zfs on windows, storage spaces will work just as well for your use.

[UrbanFreestyle]

11 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Freenas/zfs isn't any worse without ecc than any other filesystem. ECC is always better, but zfs doesn't need ecc more than any other filesystem.

Agreed, I was just speaking Technically it's not the best idea however i don't use ECC.

[Nick7]

On 9/25/2019 at 10:26 PM, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id stay away from zfs here. I d go with storage spaces. It has most of the same features as zfs, plus a few more(like tiereing, mixed raid arrays, easy drive addition and removal). It supports the same features like snapshots, dedup or compression, bitrot correction with refs. I don't see a reason to use zfs on windows, storage spaces will work just as well for your use.

You are referring to Storage Spaces Direct, as that one has compression, SSD caching, etc.

 

On Windows 10 you are limited to 'simple, mirror or parity'.

There's also option (through some PowerShell) to enable tiering (spindles vs SSD's).

 

However, in any case, due to larger number of drives - using parity on them is not recommended, as write performance on parity is atrocious.

 

My suggestion?

Since you already plan to get SAS PCIE card, get one with caching&BBU - and use RAID features of that card. If you intend to use SSD cache for spindles, look for LSI cards with enabled CacheCade 2 function (or get a key for it). If you need more than 8 ports - get SAS expander, and connect spindles over it, and keep SSD's connected directly for max performance.

With this option you have redundancy, performance, and no hassles in Windows 10.

 

If you had CPU with 6 or more cores, and CPU/mobo that supports VT-d, then it would make sense to run Linux with ZFS, and KVM with PCIE passthrough for Windows 10 VM for gaming.

[Electronics Wizardy]

8 hours ago, Nick7 said:

You are referring to Storage Spaces Direct, as that one has compression, SSD caching, etc.

You can do that on windows 10, ive done it. You just need powershell, as you said, but all of those features can be done on windows do.

 

Also direct gives you clustering, normal storage spaces can do tiering, compression, dedup, snapshots

 

8 hours ago, Nick7 said:

cards with enabled CacheCade 2 function (or get a key for it). If you need more than 8 ports - get SAS expander, and connect spindles over it, and keep SSD's connected directly for max performance.

I think lsi is killing cachecade, Id ignore the cache or go storage spaces.