Advice on FreeBSD fresh install using 8 disks reddit / freebsd ---------------------------------------------------------------------- g0g060 · 2021-05-12 15:46 Need some pointers or best practices installing FreeBSD. I have 8 disks server, should I add a couple SSDs and mirror them and install OS on them and leave the rest for zpools for data? What could I run into over time doing either option. Overload me with articles I didn't find many, only a few. Or should I just partition the disks and install OS on same disks as data, if that's the case do I partition a couple of disks and install OS on them or all of them so that the size isn't different. Don't know what kind of zraid I will use yet, suggest something if you wish. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dkeav · 2021-05-12 15:49 I would put the OS on separate drives from the storage pool just as you describe yes. I wouldn't use a zraid level but a pool of mirrors, but that's just a personal preference i'm sure others will argue the other way. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- g0g060 · 2021-05-12 15:53 I'll just do what u say even if there are a hundred comments later :) jk, also thanks for advice on OS, as for mirrors I like mirrors for their read speed and redundancy so I was gonna do something involving mirrors anyway just don't have my terms straight yet :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- vermaden · 2021-05-12 16:20 Does that server has USB slots? If yes the I would put two Lexar S47 32 GB drives and install FreeBSD on them in ZFS mirror for system and then I would create some pool from the 8 disks, not sure if you need performance (RAID10) or space (RAID6). You can also add two cheap/small SSD inside for system pool in ZFS mirror if USB approach seems bad for you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dkeav · 2021-05-12 16:20 My affinity for mirrors is the higher speed of resilver and the ease of expansion. The raidz levels can take a long time to resilver with the very large disks we have now. So when using greater than 2-4tb disks I tend to prefer using mirrors over raidz1/2. Mirrors give good performance as well the negative is the less efficient use of the physical space. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Gornergy · 2021-05-12 16:22 For a lot of reasons, you probably want RAID 1 or RAID 10, whether that's done via ZFS or otherwise. I like SSDs a lot. But, I haven't shopped for them since prices started going up. So...they very well might be prohibitively expensive, especially for good ones. If you don't specifically need the responsiveness of SSDs, one big raid 10 can serve you well. The complexity comes from putting boot code on every disk. A mirror of SSDs for the OS and one big RAID 10 for everything else with datasets as necessary for separation/organization is kind of simpler. That's what I do on my storage server (except they're all SSDs), and it's been great. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- g0g060 · 2021-05-12 16:27 I'll check it out thanks :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- g0g060 · 2021-05-12 16:29 I was just reading about the speed of resilvering and expansion :) , some space has to be sacrificed to redundancy I don't really need this much now anyway . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- usernamefindingsucks · 2021-05-13 05:06 Some questions so that you can get good answers? What are you using it for? What do you want to max out on? Capacity/Performance/Fault tolerance? Do you want easy capacity upgrades? Is it a heavy read/write workload? Do you want the ability to spin down the drives when not in use? Are you going to use an SSD for a log device and so will have an SSD or two anyway? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- g0g060 · 2021-05-13 08:31 Oo ok, so pretty much personal data but will prpbably use jails to practice some stuff. Easy upgrades are welcome, so is the spin down drive :) why not, ssd don't really newd it unless OS is on it and th|n spin down data drives, there isn't much more room, just 8 1TB, which is enough for me :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- usernamefindingsucks · 2021-05-13 16:31 An 8 disk raidz2 will give you 6TB storage for now, but be more expensive to upgrade later. Mirrors will give you 4TB now, with a cheaper upgrade path later. If you want to try spinning down the disks you need a separate drive, an SSD is a good choice but not required. If you do go for a SSD you can partition a chunk to to be your root, another smaller partition to be a a ZIL for the HDD array, and another partition to be a cache for the HDD pool. That would give a performance boost. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- g0g060 · 2021-05-13 21:25 Thanks :), yeah I might do ssd for zil, why not :) while i'm at it ---------------------------------------------------------------------- grahamperrin · 2021-05-22 12:56 > … cache for the HDD pool … +1 This example is, like, a polar opposite to a server with eight or ten disks, but it pleases me: * [OpenZFS: L2ARC: CACHE vdev devices : freebsd](https://old.reddit.co m/r/freebsd/comments/n8avpl/openzfs_l2arc_cache_vdev_devices/)