ZFS on server with high CPU utilization

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Todd1561

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Nov 12, 2021
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Sorry if this has been asked before, when searching for this subject all you get are discussions of ZFS causing high CPU utilization.

What I'm looking to know is if ZFS can run OK on a host that will have it's CPU @ 100% utilization 24/7 for unrelated tasks? One of the arguments I often hear of why ZFS is better than HW RAID is that modern CPUs are much faster than yesteryear and significantly stronger than the paltry chips found on a typical RAID controller. My situation is a little unique, I currently run a Hyper-V host with a few VMs, one of which is a Linux VM used for crunching on the BOINC network and I have all 8 cores/16 threads of my Ryzen 3700x allocated to it. So it seems this argument might fall apart in my niche case and might even work against me. If this is going to cause ZFS to drag to a crawl then that would be a showstopper. I'm currently using a HW RAID controller but it's an older SATA II model that I would likely replace during my next refresh. This is all coming up because of Microsoft's recent announcement of discontinuing the standalone Hyper-V server product. PVE seems like it could be a viable alternative, just looking to get an idea on the best way to handle storage in my case - ZFS or HW RAID.

EDIT: I should add that I would probably just be doing 2 mirrors, one of 2 HDDs and the other of 2 SSDs. So I imagine less CPU intensive for ZFS to maintain than one of the parity options.

Thanks!
 
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I have used zfs on one host but it really uses rams and unfortunately I couldn’t expand the RAM because of slot limitations
I think it will be better to use btrfs
I am not sure if BTRFS uses more ram and CPUs or not
 
Thanks for the input everyone. I've thought about limiting the CPU to the BOINC VM but that would be a step backward for me so I'd really rather not. If that's necessary I'd probably just go with a more modern HW RAID controller. As for BTRFS, from what I can gather it's very 'beta' with PVE, even in the wiki they say it's experimental and should be used with caution. It also has no integration into the management interface, not the end of the world but not ideal. I'd probably sooner go with a regular old mdadm configuration, but either way I'm back at the concern of using a CPU that's at 100% for also managing storage.
 
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