someone1
Dabbler
- Joined
- Jun 17, 2013
- Messages
- 37
I feel like I already know the answer to this... I know this is technically possible (confirmed in a VM) but not recommended.
I'm building a new box and wanted to get away from the USB boot drives (I end up replacing these every 6-18 months). Looking for the cheapest SSD available, I stumbled across Intel Optane Memory M10 16GB for about $25/each so I got 2 on the way. As a boot drive, this seems fine (I believe I can use it as a boot drive, it should just show up as a NVMe drive).
Now I realize it's write speeds aren't stellar, but its got massively better latency, high endurance (see Intel Ark), and my write needs aren't massive - pretty low actually. I got 6x4TB 5900RPM drives in a RAIDZ2 Configuration. This is for home use with media/Plex being the largest use-case, but I do run VMs on the box (Plex, Unifi Controller, Unifi NVR, misc. containers). The overall performance of the system doesn't need to be production level, but it has been problematic at times as-is and I'd like some improvement even if marginal.
Now with the obvious - are a lot of my workloads sync writes? Probably not. Do I think I NEED a SLOG? No. Will I notice a difference? Probably not? I think Optane by design makes it a suitable SLOG - low write latency, high endurance, no write-cache so no PLP required - and using partitions won't impact performance, etc.
I got 2 of these to do a mirrored boot drive. I was thinking I could partition both drives to a 12GB and 4GB partition and mirror across the 12GB partitions for my boot drive and then get a mirrored SLOG across the 4GB (or striped). Alternatively I could use one for boot and the other for SLOG but I think I care more about redundant boot than having a SLOG. Theoretically I know this is possible since I tested installing FreeNAS on partitioned disk in a VM.
I guess I'm interested to hear if there are any downsides to this approach - other than the added complexity of the setup. I'm not expecting to gain a whole lot, but I think there would be a gain, albeit small and probably not noticeable.
I'm building a new box and wanted to get away from the USB boot drives (I end up replacing these every 6-18 months). Looking for the cheapest SSD available, I stumbled across Intel Optane Memory M10 16GB for about $25/each so I got 2 on the way. As a boot drive, this seems fine (I believe I can use it as a boot drive, it should just show up as a NVMe drive).
Now I realize it's write speeds aren't stellar, but its got massively better latency, high endurance (see Intel Ark), and my write needs aren't massive - pretty low actually. I got 6x4TB 5900RPM drives in a RAIDZ2 Configuration. This is for home use with media/Plex being the largest use-case, but I do run VMs on the box (Plex, Unifi Controller, Unifi NVR, misc. containers). The overall performance of the system doesn't need to be production level, but it has been problematic at times as-is and I'd like some improvement even if marginal.
Now with the obvious - are a lot of my workloads sync writes? Probably not. Do I think I NEED a SLOG? No. Will I notice a difference? Probably not? I think Optane by design makes it a suitable SLOG - low write latency, high endurance, no write-cache so no PLP required - and using partitions won't impact performance, etc.
I got 2 of these to do a mirrored boot drive. I was thinking I could partition both drives to a 12GB and 4GB partition and mirror across the 12GB partitions for my boot drive and then get a mirrored SLOG across the 4GB (or striped). Alternatively I could use one for boot and the other for SLOG but I think I care more about redundant boot than having a SLOG. Theoretically I know this is possible since I tested installing FreeNAS on partitioned disk in a VM.
I guess I'm interested to hear if there are any downsides to this approach - other than the added complexity of the setup. I'm not expecting to gain a whole lot, but I think there would be a gain, albeit small and probably not noticeable.
