Mini XL+ build fantasy help

[wdp]

My original plan was to put 8x 18TB as mirrors in a Mini XL+, which lands me at about 60TB usable storage. That gives more flexibility to what the unit can be used for (I work in media, photography and video production). Rust drives keep me in a budget where I can pick up something like WD Red Pros, Gold or HC 550s.

But as I stare at this empty XL+ chassis on my desk, I can't help but just wonder what life would be like if I went all SSD.

I've never even really thought about SSD as a viable option for mass storage before QVO 8TB drives hit the market. I would have to downsize my storage footprint quite a bit, but for the silence and power savings, the SPEED! One can daydream?

I currently have a 6x6TB Raid6 that's overdue for an upgrade. I have become fond of mirrors in ZFS. They're simpler to scale and pivot storage decisions with. I havent ever upgraded one in a real world scenario.

With all SSDs though, correct me if I'm wrong, I could get 5 mirrors out of an XL+? Does that even make sense? Why not run RaidZ2 and gain the extra storage, keeping me around where I'm at currently?

Just thinking out loud really. Anyone running SSD configurations and care to share their experience?

 

[Davvo]

Hey! I don't run SSDs as my main storage, but I can help you on a few things.
Formality first: RAID6 equivalent on ZFS it's called RAIDZ2.

Terminology and Abbreviations Primer

We realize that new users have a lot to learn when they come to FreeNAS. There's a certain amount of confusion added to discussions when users pick random/approximate terms to describe things. I've spent a lot of time quietly trying to...

www.truenas.com

And to make sure we have the basic layed down, I'm gonna link the Introduction to ZFS as well.

Introduction to ZFS

This is a short introduction to ZFS. It is really only intended to convey the bare minimum knowledge needed to start diving into ZFS and is in no way meant to cut Michael W. Lucas' and Allan Jude's book income. It is a bit of a spiritual...

www.truenas.com

Now, as you can see in the configurator it is indeed true that you can get 5 mirrors (10 drives) using all the available slots. I want to add that using SSDs would also mean way less heat to dissipate (not marginal since it has been proven that using 7200+ RPM drives in the mini line, though not in the XL+ iirc, leads to uncomfortably high drives temperature).
About the mirrors, it would only make sense if you plan to do block storage (resource linked).

Resource - The path to success for block storage

ZFS does two different things very well. One is storage of large sequentially-written files, such as archives, logs, or data files, where the file does not have the middle bits modified after creation. This is optimal for RAIDZ. It's what most...

www.truenas.com

With 10 SSDs I would suggest a single vdev in RAIDZ3: do not end up like LTT!
Do note that using the 2 internal bays means that you will noy be able to add anything like a L2ARC or a SLOG, so you need to plan things beforehand; you will probably also want a network that can handle up to 10 Gbit/s (altough your pool won't ever reach that high).
All in all, not even mirrors can save you from accurately planning your system based on your needs (present and planned).
I will add an amazing resource that clearly explains the advantages and the disadvantages of the various ZFS pool layouts and teaches you how to calculate their performances.

https://www.ixsystems.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/ZFS_Storage_Pool_Layout_White_Paper_February_2022.pdf

 

[wdp]

Thanks for the feedback. I've done one ZFS server build for a 12bay supermicro chassis and it runs in raidz2 with 128GiB of memory, and then I picked up this MiniXL+ for my personal server needs and an excuse to have TrueNAS running in a place where I have to interact with it on a more regular basis. I mostly wanted to learn how to plan and how things behave, in a real world working environment.

I've opted to stick with rust for now. RAW video files are just too big these days and its nice to daydream.

I upgraded the memory to 4x32gb Hynix DDR4-2400 ECC Reg sticks. I read some people had issues with 256 and I wasn't quite ready to sink that much money into ram from an amazon reseller after I had been through 2 returns to get memory that was legit.

The top front panel 2.5" bay is now a time machine backup with a 4TB EVO. I have two 8TB QVO's from a field production a few years back. The caches flood so fast and they write so slow, I haven't ever really found a use for them besides a slow shelf stable backup drive, in a drawer somewhere. I debated making one of those the time machine drive. My laptop has a 4TB boot disk though, and it would be nice to have more than a single snapshot fit on a drive but I'm not sure I'd like how long a large time machine update would take though. It's nice to have some form of recent rollbacks in case I forget to archive something off the laptop and delete it.

Today I picked up 8x18TB of rust. The plan is mirrors but I would like to see how well RaidZ2 spins first. The extra storage would be advantageous.

That leaves me with two 2.5" sata slots inside the case. So I guess the real question is how to best utilize those? I kinda feel like the m2 slot is wasted in this whole equation too. No boot mirror either.

If I had to guess, I'd say that 80% of the workload will be scrubbing timelines in Davinci Resolve Studio.