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Question about what to put on RAID and what to put on NVME (self.selfhosted)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by ch00f to c/selfhosted

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Since 2016, I've had a fileserver mostly just for backups. System is on 1 drive, RAID6 for files, and semi-annual cold backup.

I was playing with Photoprism, and their docs say "we recommend placing the storage folder on a local SSD drive for best performance." In this case, the storage folder holds basically everything but the pictures themselves such as the database files.

Up until now, if I lost any database files, it was just a matter of rebuilding them by re-indexing my photos or whatever, but I'm looking for something more robust since I'll have some friends/family using Pixelfed, Matrix, etc.

So my question is: Is it a valid strategy to keep database files on the SSD with some kind of nightly backup to RAID, or should I just store the whole lot on the RAID from the get go? Or does it even matter if all of these databases can fit in RAM anyway?

edit: I'm just now learning of ZFS caching which might be my answer.

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[–] one_knight_scripting 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Hah. I see your looking into ZFS caching. Highly recommend. I'm running Ubuntu 24.04 Root on ZFS RAID10. Twelve each data drives and one nvme cache drive. Gotta say it's performing exceptionally. ZFS is a bit tricky, it requires an HBA not a RAID card. You may to to flash the raid card to get it working like I did. After that, I have put together a GitHub for the install on ZFS RAID 10, but you should easily be able to change it to RAIDz2. Fair warning, it wipes the drives entirely.

https://github.com/Reddimes/ubuntu-zfsraid10/

[–] ch00f 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Picked up a LSI SAS 9305-16I. I was always planning to do software raid, so I think it’ll do the trick for zfs.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Don't make the same mistake I did. Get a backup in place before using ZFS. Using ZFS and RAIDing your drives together makes them a singular failure point. If ZFS fucks up, you're done. The only way to mitigate this is having another copy in a different pool and preferably different machine. I got lucky that my corrupted ZFS pool was still readable and I could copy files off, but others have not been so lucky.

[–] ch00f 2 points 23 hours ago

Yeah, I wouldn't dare.

The fact that I migrated from a 3 drive to 6 drive mdadm raid without losing anything is a damn miracle.

[–] one_knight_scripting 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Hell yeah, it will. I need one of those bad boys.

[–] ch00f 2 points 2 days ago

Lucked out on eBay and got it for $50.