Pool/VDEV Recommendations

[cincibcat9]

I currently have the follow drives
2 - 4TB WD Red Plus
1 - 3TB WD Red

I was initially thinking of mirroring the 2 4TB drives, but wasnt sure if it was worth adding another drive and choose z1 instead.

Also should I create a new pool for the 3TB drive? Or should/can this be added to the same pool as the mirrored drives?

 

[ChrisRJ]

Please read the ZFS introduction from the "Recommended readings" in my signature. That will give you more background on ZFS and perhaps even answers your questions already.

 

[cincibcat9]

Thanks for the response! After a pass through the 'ZFS Intro' doc, I might just mirror the 2 4TB drives. It seems like z1 isnt really commended. Just need to figure out what I want to do with the 3TB drive.

 

[ChrisRJ]

Well, you can either use all 3 in RAIDZ1 with a net capacity of about 6 TB, or go for a mirror with 4 TB. Mirrors are better for random I/O, so it depends on your use-case.

 

[cincibcat9]

It'll primarily be used for backing up photos and docs, and streaming things via Plex.

 

[winnielinnie]

Backing up photos and streaming large videos, you'll likely find better performance when they are saved to a dataset with a recordsize policy of 1MiB.