Acquired several new drives and could use some setup advice...

[Fr Jonah]

Hi, all,

I just acquired 4 x 1tb dell enterprise drives to go along with my 4 x 1 tb wd enterprise drives and would like some advice on setup. FreeNAS complains when I attempt to do the 8x1x1tb Raidz2 configuration that I would *like* to do, and further research on the point does seem to indicate that I'll have some performance hit from going with this non-optimal setup. So, my questions are as follow:

1. Is it ok to go ahead with the 8x1x1tb setup anyway? How much of a performance hit are we talking? My specs are in my signature (though I'm in the process of upgrading to 32gb of RAM).

2. If I should avoid the non-optimal configuration from Question 1, what do you suggest for ideal balance of storage--performance--security (redundancy) for my setup? I'm willing to buy a couple more drives if necessary, but not looking for more than another $200 of investment at this point max. I lean heavily towards a Raidz2 configuration in principle.

Thanks in advance for your assistance!

 

[eraser]

I found this blog post a while ago and it was useful for me. I don't think the basics have changed much since it was written.

http://constantin.glez.de/blog/2010/06/closer-look-zfs-vdevs-and-performance

 

[Fr Jonah]

I found this blog post a while ago and it was useful for me. I don't think the basics have changed much since it was written.

http://constantin.glez.de/blog/2010/06/closer-look-zfs-vdevs-and-performance

eraser, thanks for the link... I've actually read that article many times in the past and just read it again... that being said, I still can't see anything specifically addressing the case of a non-optimal vdev configuration (i.e. performance loss resulting from non-optimal configurations). I've also noticed that several experienced users on the forum have, at one time or another, gone with one or more 8 disk Raidz2 vdevs in their setup. Does anyone have practical experience with what is lost with this non-optimal arrangement?

Thanks.

 

[joeschmuck]

Many of us have had experience with non-optimal drive setups. The question is what type of environment will your NAS be used in. If it's a home environment streaming video/music, making backups, etc... then you will never know the difference. If you are in a high transaction environment like a Google Search Engine, yes you would see a performance hit.

You will see a larger performance hit when using a RAIDZ2 over a RAIDZ1. And in a typical home/small office environment you should have no real issues in my opinion.

 

[cyberjock]

To answer your request for my feedback, that's exactly what joeschmuck has already said. In some cases you won't care. In others it will be crippling.

 

[Fr Jonah]

Well, hmm... 10x1x1tb Raidz2 is an optimal design, isn't it? Even though it probably wouldn't have been a huge impact, I just picked up 2 more Re4s (1TB) from ebay to do the 10x1 Raidz2 configuration. Thanks!

As a side note: is there a similar hit in performance for having mismatched vdevs, or is everything optimal as long as each vdev is optimal within itself?