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Seeking advice about BTRFS RAID (lemm.ee)
submitted 1 year ago by mhz@lemm.ee to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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Hi, I got a tiny Lenovo M720Q (i5-8400T / 8RAM / 128NVME / 1Tb 2,5" HDD) that I want to set as my home server with the ability to add 2 more drives (for RAID5 if possible) later using its two USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10gbps).

  • The OS (debian 12 + docker) will be exclusive to the nvme, I will mostly use 40/128GB of its capacity with no idea how to make use of the rest.

  • My data (medias, documents and ISO files) will resides on the HDD pool, while keeping a copy of my docs on my home pc.

I read a bit about BTRFS RAID I even experimented with it in a VM and it really got me interested in using it because of its flexibility of balancing between raid levels and the hot swapping of unequally sized drives in both stripped and mirrored arrays. However, most of what I read online predate kernel 6,2 (which improved BTRFS RAID56 reliability). So, Here I am asking if anyone here is using BTRFS RAID and if it is stable enough to use on a mostly idle server or should I stick with LVM instead. What good practices to do or bad ones to avoid?

Thank you.

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[-] Atemu@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

I got a tiny Lenovo M720Q (i5-8400T / 8RAM / 128NVME / 1Tb 2,5" HDD) that I want to set as my home server with the ability to add 2 more drives (for RAID5 if possible) later using its two USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10gbps).

Do not use USB drives in a multi-device scenario. Best avoid actively using them at all. Use USB drives for at most daily backups.

I wouldn't advocate for RAID5. I'd also advocate against RAID to begin with in a homelab setting unless you have special uptime requirements (e.g. often away from home for prolonged periods) or an insane amount of drives.

I will mostly use 40/128GB of its capacity with no idea how to make use of the rest.

I use spare SSD space for write-through bcache. You need to make the decision to use it early on because you need to format the HDDs with bcache beneath the FS and post-formatting conversions are hairy at best.

most of what I read online predate kernel 6,2 (which improved BTRFS RAID56 reliability).

Still unstable and only for testing purposes. Assume it will eat your data.

this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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