this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2025
49 points (94.5% liked)

Selfhosted

60409 readers
502 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

Detailed Rules Post

  1. Be civil.

  2. No spam.

  3. Posts are to be related to self-hosting.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or readme if you're providing a link.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title.

  6. No trolling.

  7. Promotion posts require active participation, with an account that is at least 30 days old. F/LOSS without a paywall has exceptions, with requirements. See the rules link for details.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
ruud@lemmy.world
Loki@lemmy.world
CannaVet@lemmy.world
devve@lemmy.world
ayyy@sh.itjust.works
curbstickle@anarchist.nexus
curbstickle_lw@lemmy.world
49
Question about what to put on RAID and what to put on NVME (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by ch00f@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
51 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Since 2016, I've had a fileserver mostly just for backups. System is on 1 drive, RAID6 for files, and semi-annual cold backup.

I was playing with Photoprism, and their docs say "we recommend placing the storage folder on a local SSD drive for best performance." In this case, the storage folder holds basically everything but the pictures themselves such as the database files.

Up until now, if I lost any database files, it was just a matter of rebuilding them by re-indexing my photos or whatever, but I'm looking for something more robust since I'll have some friends/family using Pixelfed, Matrix, etc.

So my question is: Is it a valid strategy to keep database files on the SSD with some kind of nightly backup to RAID, or should I just store the whole lot on the RAID from the get go? Or does it even matter if all of these databases can fit in RAM anyway?

edit: I'm just now learning of ZFS caching which might be my answer.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] one_knight_scripting@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Hah. I see your looking into ZFS caching. Highly recommend. I'm running Ubuntu 24.04 Root on ZFS RAID10. Twelve each data drives and one nvme cache drive. Gotta say it's performing exceptionally. ZFS is a bit tricky, it requires an HBA not a RAID card. You may to to flash the raid card to get it working like I did. After that, I have put together a GitHub for the install on ZFS RAID 10, but you should easily be able to change it to RAIDz2. Fair warning, it wipes the drives entirely.

https://github.com/Reddimes/ubuntu-zfsraid10/

[–] ch00f@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Picked up a LSI SAS 9305-16I. I was always planning to do software raid, so I think it’ll do the trick for zfs.

[–] one_knight_scripting@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hell yeah, it will. I need one of those bad boys.

[–] ch00f@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Lucked out on eBay and got it for $50.

[–] IronKrill@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Don't make the same mistake I did. Get a backup in place before using ZFS. Using ZFS and RAIDing your drives together makes them a singular failure point. If ZFS fucks up, you're done. The only way to mitigate this is having another copy in a different pool and preferably different machine. I got lucky that my corrupted ZFS pool was still readable and I could copy files off, but others have not been so lucky.

[–] ch00f@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I wouldn't dare.

The fact that I migrated from a 3 drive to 6 drive mdadm raid without losing anything is a damn miracle.