Raid5/6 or ZFS?

[MariusJS]

I am thinking 3-6 HDD's what should i Use, and why?

[alpenwasser]

I am thinking 3-6 HDD's what should i Use, and why?

Well  I love  myself  some  ZFS, so  I'd  say  that.  You avoid  the  RAID5 write-hole, it

has  all  kinds of nice features for  protecting  your  data's integrity and pool creation

and  management  is nice and  easy as well. Also, you don't need a super-expensive

RAID controller, and you won't be dependant on said RAID controller to have access

to your  data (meaning  if your  RAID  controller breaks you're going to need another

one to have  access  to your data  again  AFAIK, with  ZFS  all  you  need is a system

with  enough  ports  to  connect  your  disks  and  ZFS  installed  and  you can mount

your pool and get your data).

 

One thing though: I would recommend running ECC memory for ZFS.

[MariusJS]

The mobo I am going to use does not support ECC, would you still choose ZFS?

[alpenwasser]

The mobo I am going to use does not support ECC, would you still choose ZFS?

 

Personally, yes. I'm  not  that  much of  an expert  on proper RAID controllers (only

need host  bus adapters  for ZFS),  but if  you want  a controller  which  can  do its

own  data  integrity  checks  it's  probably going  to cost  quite  a  bit  (maybe more

than getting a  different M/ B with ECC capability).

 

I have been  unable  to find any  info on  scrubbing operations  for hardware RAID

controllers via  google so far though. So,  without ECC  memory you  lose the data

integrity  bonus, but  you  still get the  rest of ZFS' feature  set,  which is  still pretty

awesome IMO.

[MariusJS]

Well since I don't have any linux experience other than ununtu, and some debian+apache, I think I am going with RAID5 + Server2012, as I Already have the License, and the RAID controller laying around

I also discovered server 2012 supports almost everything I liked about FreeNas + more!

Thanks for the help anyways

[alpenwasser]

Well since I don't have any linux experience other than ununtu, and some debian+apache, I think I am going with RAID5 + Server2012, as I Already have the License, and the RAID controller laying around

I also discovered server 2012 supports almost everything I liked about FreeNas + more!

Thanks for the help anyways

Haha, yeah if you already have the RAID card then that sounds

like a pretty resonable approach.