Advanced Guide to ZFS on Linux?

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SwanRonson

Member
Sep 27, 2018
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I currently have a software RAID10 array using mdadm on Debian Stretch. It stores media files like family pictures, home videos, etc. I had originally written off ZFS due to excessive hardware (RAM) requirements, but I read that it doesn't actually require all that much RAM if you're not using the deduplication feature.

As I won't be using the deduplication feature, I would like to plan for my next build to be ZFS based. My array is currently 4x 8TB drives and it's very far from full, but I'll be acquiring new hardware and additional drives over the course of next year.

Does anyone know of a good guide to ZFS on Linux? Everything I found is rather spammy/clickbaity "here's how to format a disk" crap that doesn't show anything advanced like SSD cache or redundancy setup.
 

_alex

Active Member
Jan 28, 2016
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Bavaria / Germany
The manpages usually provide a not so shabby read ... straight from the devs..

This should give you terms to search for what you are really interested in, what is not so spammy anymore.
 
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vl1969

Active Member
Feb 5, 2014
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Not sure what you mean redundancy setup.
You now have raid10 on 4 disks.
If you want to keep the same setup
Sta mirror is the key.
If you have less than 8tb of data then get 2 8tb disks and create a zfs mirror on then. Copy data from current raid.
Dismantle the current raid.
Add the disks to zfs pool in mirrored vdevs. 2 disks per vdevs.
This creates 3 way mirror similar to your raid10 in redundancy.

Now I am not sure how to add add cache disks but it can be done later
Using "zpool add -f tank cache sdc"
Replace tank and sdc with name of your pool and your ssd.

Now ,do you really need cache on home server?.
Is it worth the hastle and expance of getting hight quality expensive ssd thay can withstand the load.
 
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