ZFS Raid setup help

[shadow013]

I am looking for some advice on the best route to go for setting up a ZFS raid pool. I am setting this up within Proxmox.

 

I have 3x12tb Seagate Exos X12 drives that I will be installing. This will primarily store media for my Plex Server. I have a separate 500gb SSD already installed that will host VMs and containers.

 

I have never used RAID of any kind and have always just done JBOD in the past, not knowing any better. I want to set this new server up the right way to ensure I am good to go for quite a while.

I was considering using raidz1, but many have advised me against it since another drive would be likely to fail in the process of recovery. However, I can't really afford (storage wise) to go with raidz2. I am upgrading from an 8tb media drive in my Windows system, and raidz2 would really only leave me with 10tb which isn't what I want to achieve.

 

Will I be fine with raidz1 or should I consider getting another drive to increase total usable space and utilize raidz2?

[Windows7ge]

When it comes to virtualization your best option for performance would be RAID10 or striped mirrors. This gives you the most IOPS. However if that's not a concern you can use raidz1 just make sure you keep backups of your VMs, CT, and any other data.

 

Really, regardless of RAID level backups are always a good idea.

[Electronics Wizardy]

With 3 drives raidz1 is you only real option. With only 3 drives, the main worries about other drives failing durin ga rebuild is much lower

 

Keep bckups and run scrubs nd this won't be. big issue.

 

 

[dalekphalm]

9 hours ago, shadow013 said:

I am looking for some advice on the best route to go for setting up a ZFS raid pool. I am setting this up within Proxmox.

 

I have 3x12tb Seagate Exos X12 drives that I will be installing. This will primarily store media for my Plex Server. I have a separate 500gb SSD already installed that will host VMs and containers.

 

I have never used RAID of any kind and have always just done JBOD in the past, not knowing any better. I want to set this new server up the right way to ensure I am good to go for quite a while.

I was considering using raidz1, but many have advised me against it since another drive would be likely to fail in the process of recovery. However, I can't really afford (storage wise) to go with raidz2. I am upgrading from an 8tb media drive in my Windows system, and raidz2 would really only leave me with 10tb which isn't what I want to achieve.

 

Will I be fine with raidz1 or should I consider getting another drive to increase total usable space and utilize raidz2?

With 3 drives, you can’t do RAIDZ2. It needs 4 minimum. 
 

Your only practical choice is RAIDZ1. Which is totally fine for your scenario. Don’t over think it too much. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

20 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

With 3 drives, you can’t do RAIDZ2. It needs 4 minimum. 
 

Your only practical choice is RAIDZ1. Which is totally fine for your scenario. Don’t over think it too much. 

well you can do a raidz2 with 3 drives

 

brandon@datamover:~$ sudo zpool status
  pool: test
 state: ONLINE
 scrub: none requested
config:

        NAME                         STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        test                         ONLINE       0     0     0
          raidz2-0                   ONLINE       0     0     0
            /home/brandon/diska.img  ONLINE       0     0     0
            /home/brandon/diskb.img  ONLINE       0     0     0
            /home/brandon/diskc.img  ONLINE       0     0     0

please never do this, mirrors are better in all ways here

 

You get the space of one disk if you were curious.

 

 

[dalekphalm]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

well you can do a raidz2 with 3 drives

 

brandon@datamover:~$ sudo zpool status
  pool: test
 state: ONLINE
 scrub: none requested
config:

        NAME                         STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        test                         ONLINE       0     0     0
          raidz2-0                   ONLINE       0     0     0
            /home/brandon/diska.img  ONLINE       0     0     0
            /home/brandon/diskb.img  ONLINE       0     0     0
            /home/brandon/diskc.img  ONLINE       0     0     0

please never do this, mirrors are better in all ways here

 

You get the space of one disk if you were curious.

 

 

Yeah there’s no point. Might as well do raid1 mirror with 2 drives and use the third as a separate backup drive rather than raidz2. 

[shadow013]

Well, I ended up going with unraid instead. Looks great and was easy to set up so far, just transferring files and then doing parity set up! Figured this is a good starting point until my current storage fills up then might look at other solutions at that point

[paddy-stone]

12 hours ago, shadow013 said:

Well, I ended up going with unraid instead. Looks great and was easy to set up so far, just transferring files and then doing parity set up! Figured this is a good starting point until my current storage fills up then might look at other solutions at that point

Don't forget backups though, unless you have stuff on there you don't care if it dies?

 

I had someone recently begging me for help after not keeping backups for years, and his hard drive has now died. He lost work files too, so he has been very sad. Luckily they are his OWN work files, as a lecturer, so now he has to try and recreate the stuff he lost.

I admit I was not very sympathetic, after telling him for a long time that he was living dangerously not having any backups. He managed to get some of the files back, as the drive wasn't completely dead, but he still lost a LOT of work and personal files. Please don't go that way, it's better to spend a couple hundred on hard drives, than spending days/weeks trying to recover files and then still being disappointed that you lost pics etc that you can never get back.