It is very cool that nvme drives are now cheap. It looks like pricing is linear up to 4TB now. That probably means the time for 10gb copper at home is finally here. (edit 10gb RJ45 switches also appear to be sufficiently available now)
Synology's SHR and Unraid do it easily.
You can then add 1TB 2nd partition on 6TB and 5TB and 8TB drives and add another ZFS VDEV to the same pool - or create another pool.
... and You can also add 3rd partition.
Also its really easy to get used drives in the same or similar size ... unless you live in some really 'hard to live' part of the world.
As far as I know you can't have mismatching drives as a single contiguous space in ZFS. Maybe it has changed.
And when I want to add a new drive of a random size to extend the size of the same directory it's again a pain of adding and extending stuff.
Yes you can, example below:
vermaden ~ % truncate -s 1G FILE.0
vermaden ~ % truncate -s 2G FILE.1
vermaden ~ % mdconfig.sh -c FILE.0
IN: created vnode at /dev/md0
vermaden ~ % mdconfig.sh -c FILE.1
IN: created vnode at /dev/md1
vermaden ~ % lsblk md0
DEVICE MAJ:MIN SIZE TYPE LABEL MOUNT
md0 2:17 1.0G zfs - -
vermaden ~ % lsblk md1
DEVICE MAJ:MIN SIZE TYPE LABEL MOUNT
md1 2:18 2.0G zfs - -
vermaden ~ % doas zpool create test md0 md1
vermaden ~ % zpool status test
pool: test
state: ONLINE
config:
NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
test ONLINE 0 0 0
md0 ONLINE 0 0 0
md1 ONLINE 0 0 0
errors: No known data errors
But with ZFS you have plenty of options to use disks of different sizes.
Example below, RAIDZ from 4 disks of 2TB and added a mirror of two 5TB disks to the same ZFS pool.
vermaden ~ % doas zpool create test raidz md{0,1,2,3}
vermaden ~ % zpool status test
pool: test
state: ONLINE
config:
NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
test ONLINE 0 0 0
raidz1-0 ONLINE 0 0 0
md0 ONLINE 0 0 0
md1 ONLINE 0 0 0
md2 ONLINE 0 0 0
md3 ONLINE 0 0 0
errors: No known data errors
vermaden ~ % doas zpool add test mirror md4 md5
vermaden ~ % zpool status test
pool: test
state: ONLINE
config:
NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
test ONLINE 0 0 0
raidz1-0 ONLINE 0 0 0
md0 ONLINE 0 0 0
md1 ONLINE 0 0 0
md2 ONLINE 0 0 0
md3 ONLINE 0 0 0
mirror-1 ONLINE 0 0 0
md4 ONLINE 0 0 0
md5 ONLINE 0 0 0
errors: No known data errors
Regards,
vermaden
This is my 4th NAS iteration, so I've worked out exactly how I want it over the course of about 10 years. Partial parts list here: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/chiefnoah/saved/CxjNyc
Like maybe a rack mounted low power quad core with lots of memory slots, 6 or so 3.5” spinny slots, and some hot swap nvme bays for an affordable price.
I dont need exotic hw, I just want the ability to have some big slow storage mixed with some fast storage.
My current set is a 1U atom setup with an esas card hooked up to a 1U drive shelf. With dual bonded 10gbps uplink.
I believe there would be a 'follow up' to this article when 8 TB (or at least 6 TB) NVMe SSD modules will be available on 2280 and 2242 sizes :)
Then I would make ZFS mirror of them ... and hopefully with ECC RAM.