More ram or 2 SSDs?

[chri5]

I am thinking about doubling my ram to 64 GB but I am wondering if adding 2x 500gb SSDs instead would improve my system more than the ram upgrade?
I only have 2x 4TB spinning disks currently doing everything. I'm using plex, nextcloud, photoprism and 1 VM. Thanks.

 

[Snow]

Ram always Ram.

 

[Snow]

What are you uses for the nas? In some rare cases ssds are better, but 90% of use case ram will improve every thing.
ZFS use ram as a catch disk.

 

[ChrisRJ]

I am thinking about doubling my ram to 64 GB but I am wondering if adding 2x 500gb SSDs instead would improve my system more than the ram upgrade?
I only have 2x 4TB spinning disks currently doing everything. I'm using plex, nextcloud, photoprism and 1 VM. Thanks.

What is the performance issue you are currently experiencing? Specifically, what performance are you seeing vs. expecting and how do you test this?

With 32 GB of RAM an L2ARC SSD does not make sense. And for SLOG you would need an enterprise SSD with high write endurance. Plus an SLOG is not a write cache.

Some insights into SLOG/ZIL with ZFS on FreeNAS

What is the ZIL? POSIX provides a facility for the system or an application to make sure that data requested to be written is actually committed to stable storage: a synchronous write request. Upon completion of a sync write request, the underlying filesystem is supposed to guarantee that a...

www.truenas.com

 

[chri5]

What are you uses for the nas? In some rare cases ssds are better, but 90% of use case ram will improve every thing.
ZFS use ram as a catch disk.

It's the VM where I feel the system is slow. I thought about moving the zvol over to SSDs from the spinners might help.
Plex seems fine even with 2 or 3 people watching different things.

 

[sretalla]

I thought about moving the zvol over to SSDs from the spinners might help.

Probably right.

Having a separate SSD pool for VMs is a good idea and will probably do better than adding more RAM to improve things.

 

[Daisuke]

doubling my ram to 64 GB but I am wondering if adding 2x 500gb SSDs

Both, start by adding the memory, then create a dual SSDs pool dedicated for your VMs and Kubernetes applications. My Bluefin Recommended Settings and Optimizations

Edit: Just saw @sretalla's post.

 

[chri5]

Both, start by adding the memory, then create a dual SSDs pool dedicated for your VMs and Kubernetes applications. My Bluefin Recommended Settings and Optimizations

Edit: Just saw @sretalla's post.

Thanks all. I ended up ordering 2x1TB SSDs and an extra 32GB ram. Should arrive at the weekend. I've backed up and will be doing a fresh install of Bluefin when they arrive. Mainly so I can do a fresh install of the apps on the new SSDs.

 

[Daisuke]

will be doing a fresh install of Bluefin

Smart move. You could migrate easy the current apps pool to the new ssd pool, but performing a clean install will get you aligned with the new changes in Bluefin which an upgrade does not implement them.

 

[NickF]

Two disks mirrored as a SPECIAL vdev may increase the snappiness of your share substantially. While more RAM will obviously be a general performance improvement, a SPECIAL vdev (mirrored!) may actually improve usability of your NAS while looking at directories with large amounts of files. As an example, I have a large quantity of family photos and it was painstakingly slow to look at the pictures thumbnails before I introduced a SPECIAL vdev and it is incomparably faster now with one.

 

[Snow]

Probably right.

Having a separate SSD pool for VMs is a good idea and will probably do better than adding more RAM to improve things.

Agree,.


I use SSDs just for Apps & VMs and it does help. I do mine in raidz1 setup which is over kill just mirrored would be fine.

 

[artlessknave]

I've backed up

 

[NugentS]

Two disks mirrored as a SPECIAL vdev may increase the snappiness of your share substantially. While more RAM will obviously be a general performance improvement, a SPECIAL vdev (mirrored!) may actually improve usability of your NAS while looking at directories with large amounts of files. As an example, I have a large quantity of family photos and it was painstakingly slow to look at the pictures thumbnails before I introduced a SPECIAL vdev and it is incomparably faster now with one.

Or a single SSD as L2ARC, metadata only - which is not pool critical like the special vdev

 

[sretalla]

VMs and it does help. I do mine in raidz1 setup which is over kill just mirrored would be fine.

Not sure I agree with that in total...

RAIDZ1 is clearly not better for block storage:

The path to success for block storage

It seems like I haven't written a sticky for awhile, but just in the last week I've had to cover this topic several times. ZFS does two different things very well. One is storage of large sequentially-written files, such as archives, logs, or data files, where the file does not have the middle...

www.truenas.com

Indeed mirrored is fine (and probably better).

 

[artlessknave]

I do mine in raidz1 setup

raidz1 is very much discouraged.

 

[Snow]

Raidz1 on ssds is discouraged?

 

[Snow]

Not sure I agree with that in total...

RAIDZ1 is clearly not better for block storage:

The path to success for block storage

It seems like I haven't written a sticky for awhile, but just in the last week I've had to cover this topic several times. ZFS does two different things very well. One is storage of large sequentially-written files, such as archives, logs, or data files, where the file does not have the middle...

www.truenas.com

Indeed mirrored is fine (and probably better).

Not sure but that article is talking about sniping spinning disks zoom zoom (AKA HDD's).

 

[Redcoat]

sniping disks zoom zoom

? what means?

 

[Snow]

? what means?

Thanks! I miss spelled the crap out of that!

 

[artlessknave]

Raidz1 on ssds is discouraged?

less so than spinners but generally yes. partly because when the forums say "raidz1 is generally OK for SSDs" someone always reads "raidz1 is the best raidz1 ever", ignores all the rest, and makes a 100 disk raidz1 with 18TB drives and no backup.....

it's a bit like how Tide had to put a disclaimer "do not eat" on tide pods.