Recommendated disk layout for ZFS

[Ollivier Robert]

According to Michael Reifenberger:
> having 6 Disks I have some possibillities for the disk layout:
> 
> - all 6 disks in raidz
> - 2 * 3 disk in raidz
> - 3 * 2 disk in raid1

You forgot :
- all 6 disks in raidz2     (4 used for storage, 2 parity)

> What would be the preferred layout from an performance POV?

Read or write performance?

Write performance is probably better with raid1, knowing that the three
mirrors will be stripped together automatically.

A better compromise could be, 5 disks in raidz(2), and one spare disk.

You also must consider how much space you want, all configurations have
different usable disk space profiles.

a. 5 usable disks (83%)
b. 4 usable disks (66%)
c. 3 usable disks (50%)
d. 4 usable disks (66%)
e. 4 or 3 usable disks and one spare (66 - 50%)

> Has anyone allready done a throughput comparison of the different layouts?

Haven't seen one yet.
-- 
Ollivier ROBERT -=- FreeBSD: The Power to Serve! -=- roberto at keltia.freenix.fr
Darwin sidhe.keltia.net Version 8.10.1: Wed May 23 16:33:00 PDT 2007 i386