Use SSD to store Jails and Bhyve VM

[Soloam]

Hello all, I have 2 250GB SSD that I was planning to on my Jails and VM's (or just in one of them). The idea is to use them in mirror, to have some security if one of them failed. Should I keep mirror, or buy a extra drive and go with zRaid1?

Do you advise it, or against it? Will I be able to snapshot and replicate the jails in mirror? Or does this only works on zRaid1 and zRaid2?

Thank you all

 

[scrappy]

In my setup I use two 500GB SSDs in a mirror for VMs and Jails. Historically, RAIDZx configurations were discouraged for VMs due to slower write speeds and latency. Not sure how bad that would be though with an all SSD RAIDZ config. If you have the resources you could do a striped + mirrored setup with 4 SSDs for good redundancy and speed.

 

[Soloam]

Thnk you for your replay @scrappy. I only have 2 ssd at the moment. Did you noticed any performance improvement in the VM's and in the jails? From what I read around, the improvements in the VM's are greater.

I never used mirror in freenas before... do I keep the option to do snapshots and replications?

Thank you

 

[garm]

I don’t like to have jails and services running on my storage pools. I treat storage pools as write only (although I do delete old backups and such, but I rarely modify something written to my storage pools).

I have zvol’s for VMs, jails and database mounts on a pool of mirror SSDs for shortest possible latency. The vdev type dosent play a role in the pool features such as snapshots.

I can easily restore what’s on the SSD pool as I’m backing it up both to the storage pool and off site. I use mirrors to get the healing benefits of ZFS to ensure backups are intact. The increase in reliability isn’t hurting either.

 

[Soloam]

Sorry @garm I'm lost in translation (English is not my native language). So you can't do snapshots of a mirror pool? Is that what you are saying? I really like the snapshot function, it allows me to bring my system back online in seconds, if something goes wrong... If that is the case I will consider adding a extra drive and building a zRaid1 pool.

My VM's at the moment are running in a zvol inside a zRaid2 pool

Thank You

 

[garm]

So you can't do snapshots of a mirror pool?

No, the opposite. There are no limitations for a pool of mirror virtual devices.

 

[Soloam]

That is god news! Thank you @garm ! I'll make the migration! Are the performance improvements noticeable?

 

[ChaosBlades]

I have had jails/VMs on a SATA SSD Mirror with snapshots for over a year and no issues. Just recently switched over to M.2 NVMe SSDs Mirrored and that also works fine.

 

[garm]

That is god news! Thank you @garm ! I'll make the migration! Are the performance improvements noticeable?

Depends on your workload. But random database IO is for sure quicker for me on sata SSD then IronWolf

 

[Soloam]

My main concern is ssd degradation! That is my main concern