Comment on Building my first NAS: Assistance on part selection please
monkeyman512@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I assume the cache drive is for your ZFS pool. You probably don’t need that.
Comment on Building my first NAS: Assistance on part selection please
monkeyman512@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I assume the cache drive is for your ZFS pool. You probably don’t need that.
CatLikeLemming@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
How come? I’ve seen those recommended quite often.
monkeyman512@lemmy.world 2 months ago
When you read files from the ZFS filesystem it will automatically keep the files in RAM. This is called the ARC and it is why people frequently recommend having a lot of RAM with ZFS. The ARC is very effective, automatic, and has no risk because it only caches reads. A cache drive is a secondary ARC generally using a fast SSD. The problem is that it generally only helps performance when you are reading lots of small files multiple times. This is because ZFS does so well reading large files from HDD that it doesn’t make much of a difference.
In short: If you already have the drive and want to play with the feature, go for it. But if your going to spend money on the drive, you will probably be better served spending it on more RAM.
CatLikeLemming@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
Got it, thank you