Will 1 SSD Work?


anony

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There are two subsystems in unRAID, the storage array and the cache pool.  The storage array only officially supports spinning hard drives.  The storage array is where you store all your big media/data files.  Some folks have used SSDs for the data drives in the storage array, but using one for the parity drive definitely isn't a good idea - trim or scrub would invalidate parity.  The parity drive should be as big as or bigger than your biggest data drive.

 

The cache pool is meant for higher speed access and stores files waiting to be written to the storage array as well as Docker and VM files.  SSDs are very commonly used for the cache drive/pool.  You could have a cache drive that's larger than the biggest drive in your storage array, but that would be very unusual.

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In that case, you have a couple of options:

 

- Use the SSD as your cache drive, formatted with either XFS or BTRFS.

- Use the SSD as your cache drive, with the plan to add additional SSDs to create a redundant cache pool.  Use BTRFS.

- Mount the SSD external to either the storage array or cache pool using the Unassigned Devices plugin, which you'd obtain by starting off with the Community Applications plugin.

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I see, OK. I'm planning on using the system for two VMs on 1 computers. Thanks for the help. I understand now.

Unraid is not primarily a hypervisor, it just happens to have a GUI interface to linux open source KVM hypervisor. If you aren't planning on running a storage array, unraid doesn't really have a whole lot to offer that isn't available for free in the major linux distros.

 

What hardware are you planning to use?

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