This guide is designed to give you the quickest way to get a "net new" RAID setup on Ubuntu with a minimum of 3 or more (ideally) matching drives.
At my house, I run a small media server for the local network. From backups of my various devices to running small test projects or archiving my retro game ROM collections, we use a LOT of storage. The server in reference is a purpose-built computer with a smattering of various sized WD Red's. We will be adding NEW drives to the computer to build the POOL/RAID.
Step 1 - Install Drives
In my case, I had 4 fresh 12TB WD Red's, so I shut down the box, popped the case and installed the new drives. I took special effort to make sure that the new drives were clustered at the end of the SATA controller. My motherboard has 2 M.2 slots and 6 SATA ports. Boot is an M.2 and I had 3 other SATA (0 index) drives, so the new ones were SATA 3, 4, & 5.
Once the drives are installed, power the box back on, log in and use the lsblk command to display the drives and their assigned drive letter.
❯ lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda 8:0 0 3.6T 0 disk
└─sda1 8:1 0 3.6T 0 part /media/disk1
sdb 8:16 0 3.6T 0 disk
└─sdb1 8:17 0 3.6T 0 part /media/disk2
sdc 8:32 0 10.9T 0 disk
sdd 8:48 0 10.9T 0 disk
sde 8:64 0 10.9T 0 disk
sdf 8:80 0 10.9T 0 disk
nvme0n1 259:0 0 476.9G 0 disk
├─nvme0n1p1 259:1 0 1G 0 part /boot/efi
├─nvme0n1p2 259:2 0 2G 0 part /boot
└─nvme0n1p3 259:3 0 473.9G 0 part
└─ubuntu--vg-ubuntu--lv 252:0 0 100G 0 lvm /
Notice the 3 matching entries under sdd, sde, sdf. Don't do anything else to the drives - no partitioning, no formatting, nothing... Just crack the package and pop it in.
Step 2 - Create the ZFS Pool
Now the fun begins. We are now going to create a ZFS pool that in the example is names MediaPool, but you can change that to whatever you like.
❯ sudo zpool create -f MediaPool raidz1 /dev/sdd /dev/sde /dev/sdfAnd then check the status to make sure everything looks right.
❯ sudo zpool status
pool: MediaPool
state: ONLINE
config:
NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
MediaPool ONLINE 0 0 0
raidz1-0 ONLINE 0 0 0
sdd ONLINE 0 0 0
sde ONLINE 0 0 0
sdf ONLINE 0 0 0
errors: No known data errors
The zpool create command will also mount your MediaPool to the /MediaPool address taken from the name of the pool itself.
❯ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
...
MediaPool 32T 0T 32T 0% /MediaPool
Step 3 - Enable ZFS Compression
LZ4 is the default compression algorithm for ZFS because it delivers a great balance of speed, efficiency, and storage savings with negligible overhead. This makes it a solid choice for ZFS RAID pools, particularly in environments where performance and responsiveness are key concerns.
❯ sudo zfs get compression MediaPool
NAME PROPERTY VALUE SOURCE
MediaPool compression on default
❯ sudo zfs set compression=on MediaPool❯ sudo zfs get compression MediaPool
NAME PROPERTY VALUE SOURCE
MediaPool compression on localStep 4 - Increase Block Size
Since I generally work with large files that do extended, sequential reads and writes, so adjusting the block size to 1M is suggested.
❯ sudo zfs get recordsize MediaPool
NAME PROPERTY VALUE SOURCE
MediaPool recordsize 128K default❯ sudo zfs set recordsize=1M MediaPool❯ sudo zfs get recordsize MediaPool
NAME PROPERTY VALUE SOURCE
MediaPool recordsize 1M localIntermission - Start Loading Data
Now that we have a striped pool, it's time to start putting some files on it. I am starting with about 8TB of files, so this is an overnight operation.
Coming Soon
- Write Caching and SLOG
- Snapshot Information
- ZPool Scrubbing (CRON)
- Monitoring and Alerting
