this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2023
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Does a 3 x 4TB SSD RAIDZ1 makes sense? (alien.top)
submitted 11 months ago by javipas@alien.top to c/datahoarder@selfhosted.forum
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I'm building a new little NAS. I've got no big requirements in terms of space (8 TB would be fine, the more the better of course) and I've got doubts deciding which way to go. I already have a 4TB Crucial MX500 SATA SSD and the idea was to spend another €400 in drives. After investigating I've got two main options:

  1. Buy another two 4TB SSD (€380) units to have three and configure that RAIDz1
  2. Buy three HGST HUH721010ALE601 10TB (€390), configure them in RAIDz1 and have more storage

Does that first option make sense, or I should just go with traditional disks? The purpose of the build is to run TrueNAS/Unraid (I'd maybe give Proxmox a go) to manage photos (with Photoprism, Photostructure, or some other alternative, I plan to test a few) and run several containers with Jellyfin etc, maybe some virtual machines to play with ocassionally.

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[–] GolemancerVekk@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

How much of that data would mean the end of the world if it were lost?

For some of that data (perhaps Jellyfin containers, those test VMs) you may not need RAID at all.

[–] javipas@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Personal photos and videos. I will make external backups, but I prefer to have RAID and some fault tolerance (1 drive with RAIDz1).

[–] giantsparklerobot@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Since this is a NAS, keep in mind Network speeds. A three drive HDD RAID-Z1 is going to have pretty fast read speeds. It won't saturate gigabit Ethernet but it will be fast. SSDs have will be able to saturate the network but you'll have a fraction of the storage.

For me I'd rather have the extra space and just wait a few seconds longer to transfer stuff. Since you're using ZFS you might consider a small SSD (no more than 1TB) as a ZIL. It'll speed up writes and help plug the write hole on the NAS.

[–] javipas@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That's exactly what I thought. Thank you u/giantsparklerobot :)

[–] giantsparklerobot@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I've got a 4-disk RAID-Z1 and read speeds will come pretty close to saturating my gigabit Ethernet. My write speeds are a pretty consistent 60MB/s over the network. I'd really only go with SSDs if the NAS was an intermediary box that absolutely needed fast write speeds but then itself persisted to a larger but slower HDD box.

In general though I'm after storage primarily and speed second.

[–] javipas@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Great. Thanks!