zfs vs hardware raid

[azop]

I'm looking at a dedicated server that includes a 32GB of ram, 2TB SATA and a 680GB SSD drive. Besides the obvious lack of redundancy, if I setup ZFS with the primary boot / storage for the 2TB drive and using some of the SSD for zfs cache would I expect to receive a decent amount of fsync's? The 680gb ssd is Intel S3510.

Can someone recommend a setup for the specifications above to receive the best performance? I would have 5-8 kvm's, one windows, the rest mysql and small linux systems.

 

[sigxcpu]

No. You will want the SSD to be used as slog to get fsyncs on it.

 

[azop]

Do I have to use the entire disk (680gb) for slog, or can I partition it? What can I use the other partition for? What size would you recommend for the slog partition?

 

[sigxcpu]

8GB for slog is enough. That is fsync data to keep for 5 seconds (default value for txg sync as far as I know).