Need help setting up the disk array configuration

[appunu]

Background​

I'm installing Proxmox Virtual Environment on a Dell PowerEdge T630 with a Dell PowerEdge RAID Controller (PERC) H330 Hardware RAID controller adapter and eight 3TB 7.2k 3.5" SAS HDDs. I have replaced the optical drive with SATA SDD for Proxmox installation and acts as a boot drive for my machine. I was contemplating using the PERC H330 to configure two of the physical disks as a RAID1 virtual disk which will store my ISOs/VMs and the backups. Then create the rest of the 6 HDDs in RAID10 mode which will be used as storage for all the activities I am going to do on the VMs. This storage array will be used by 3 - 4 VMs and the main VM (ubuntu-server) will run most/all of my docker containers while the rest are just for pen-testing. Few things I am planning to run on the containers

• Frontends: Traefik, Portainer, Organizr, Heimdall
• Smart Home: HA-Dockermon, Mosquitto MQTT Broker, ZoneMinder, MiFlora Plant Sensors
• Databases: MariaDB, phpMyAdmin, InfluxDB, Postgres, Grafana
• Downloaders: downloader, Transmission Bittorrent with VPN, SABnzbd, qBittorrent with VPN
• Indexers: NZBHydra2, Jackett
• PVRs: Lidarr, Radarr, Sonarr, LazyLibrarian
• Media Servers: Airsonic, Plex, Emby, Jellyfin, Ombi, Tautulli, PhotoShow, Calibre and more
• Media File Management: Bazarr, Picard, Handbrake, MKVToolNix, MakeMKV, FileBot, and more
• System Utilities: Firefox, Glances, APCUPSD, Logarr, Guacamole, Dozzle, qDirStat, StatPing, SmokePing, and more.
• Maintenance: Ouroboros and Docker-GC

However, there seems to be quite a bit of confusion between ZFS and HW RAID, and my research has brought me confusion rather than clarity.

Questions​

• Does my storage array plan looks good or do I need to make changes?
• Should I just go with the approach I have laid out or flash the H330 with IT mode for ZFS pools? For ZFS pools I am planning on the similar approach mirrored for backups/vms and rest for storage using RAID10.
• Another option is to set bunch of JBODS and get ZFS to work. If this is a possiblity
• If I go with the ZFS approach, Can I just create ZFS pools without flashing the PERC H330?

Note: I am a beginner to proxmox / VE / Raid arrays in general. My primary plan is to use this as a media server/dev environment. Not interested in setting up Unraid / TrueNas but willing to learn / tinker stuff on my own.

 

[appunu]

Bumpty bump

 

[kotakomputer]

In my experience with R620 with PECH H710P Mini using ZFS, I just setup each Disk as RAID-0.
So, according your system you will have 8 x VD RAID-0.

I read some blog say ZFS must use JBODS, but I never experience issue with RAID-0 on PECH H710P Mini.

 

[bobmc]

It is generally recommended that ZFS should not be used with a raid controller. While you can use JBOD or RAID-0 modes with a raid controller it's not recommended as ZFS will not be reliable as it does not have direct access to the disk and also you will not be able to transplant your pools into another system in case of systems failure or hardware upgrades.

Reportedly, the H330 can be crossflashed to IT-Mode for ZFS but do be aware that disks attached to the controller may not then be bootable - depends on the firmware that has been flashed onto the card. There's a super detailed thread about the H330 over on the ServeTheHome forums

https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...-card-to-hba330-12gbps-hba-it-firmware.25498/