In terms of ZFS SAN performance

[lizardking009]

I'm looking to build a 1U ZFS on Linux SAN based around this SuperMicro barebones. It has 4 3.5" bays with available hotswap kit to use 2.5" drives. I don't want to consider a bigger kit at this time.

http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/1U/5017/SYS-5017R-WRF.cfm

The SAN will be used for generic vSphere storage on 4gb Fibre Channel using the SCST target. I am aiming for a roughly 2tb LUN. I do plan to use compression but no dedup.

Am I better off with:
1. 4x900gb 10K SAS drives in RAID 10
2. 2xCrucial M500 240gb RAID 1 (20gb boot, 20gb ZIL, remaining for longevity) + 2x2tb 7200rpm drives in RAID 1

Option 2 is cheaper and the Crucial does have caps. With either of those options, will an L2ARC get me any additional speed?

 

[danswartz]

Depends on the working set of your VMs. A 128GB L2ARC SSD should certainly help. Option 2 looks ok.