ZFS Pool layout Ubuntu

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capn_pineapple

Active Member
Aug 28, 2013
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My C2D powered mac mini that was serving as my HTPC has just died :(. In addition to this, I've just been donated a fantastic new 4k TV from a mate moving O/S which the poor little thing just had no chance of driving anyway because it was 2009 box with a mini-dvi as its only functioning video output.

So, I'm building up an AIO HTPC/Media box from a spare machine (won in a comp) which will also look after all of my downloading etc before sending the data off to my NAS which is EOL and is using an old D525 chip with 4GB DDR2.
Cash is super tight right now so not buying anything and making my frankenstein out of spare parts.
Now I'd love to have a spare graphics card hanging around and pass it through to a VM in ProxMox (as per PX/Portainer/Docker AIO) with the ZFS array managed through nappit, or the whole lot in ESXi but all I have is onboard video, and I figure that I can't pass that through and will thus have to use it as my display connection.

What I have:
  • Random Broadwell i5 (machine is powered off & forgot to check what it is)
  • bleaurgh MSI mobo with 1xPCIe x16, 2x PCIe x1, 1x PCI (urgh)
  • 32GB RAM
  • 500GB Samsung 850 EVO
  • 2x 2TB WD greens
  • LSI 9211-8i in the x16 slot which is driving
  • 8x 128GB Sandisk x110 M.2 gumsticks for the giggles till I can afford something better to put them in, (I have another 4 of them laying about waiting to be used).
What it will do
  • Plex Front End (within Kodi) hooked up to the most glorious 4k TV.
  • NFS back to NAS for file transfers.
  • Docker
    • Portainer
    • Plex Server
    • Sonarr/Radarr/Jackett
    • NZB/Torrents
    • Muximux
    • Ubiquiti Management
    • Other docker things because docker is... docker.
So how on earth should I layout the zfs pool(s)??
500GB Evo (boot etc for Ubuntu)
Was thinking of a pair of the M.2's as a ZIL/SLOG,
Which leaves me with 6x M.2's and 2x 2TB greens in mirrored vdevs within a hybrid pool. Or is there a better way?

Sorry, long and rambly post but yeah. Pics will come.
 

Joel

Active Member
Jan 30, 2015
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Hmm... I don't think mixing SSD and HDDs in a pool is a good idea (exception being ZIL/SLOG). Not sure why, just don't have a warm fuzzy about it.

If it were me I'd mirror the 2tb drives in a storage pool and then make a different pool with the M.2s for Docker stuff and temporary storage. You could setup the download programs to save files locally then push to the storage pool when finished.

Setup this way I don't think I'd even bother with ZIL/SLOG at all and just do the 8x M.2s in mirrored pairs. You might even look at Root on ZFS and then you could have Ubuntu boot to this pool as well and free up the 850 for other uses.

Out of curiosity, how do you have the M.2s hooked up to the LSI?
 

capn_pineapple

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Aug 28, 2013
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I got these nifty 4x m.2 to SFF-8087 boards a couple of years ago.
They display the drives individually to the controller, it's essentially a 8087-4x Sata splitter. Which is fine as the drives aren't NVMe.

So the 8x drives will be connected like so:


Turns out that the secondary power connection doesn't allow the board to be fully powered so I'm off to grab a molex splitter today to make sure that both boards are seen.
 
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capn_pineapple

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Aug 28, 2013
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Yeah, they fit into 3.5 bays, and they're a fraction of the height.
I grabbed three of them and 12 of the m.2's when the drives were going for $28 a pop.
Also grabbed 2x the LSI 9211-8i's and 2x the intel expanders.