Following-up to my
best use of a spare SSD post that grahamperrin referenced. Because I don't leave my MacPro running 24/7, using a spare SSD as L2ARC gives minimal performance improvement.
My current rig has changed slightly since my posting:
MacPro3,1
- 24GB RAM
- 1x 128GB SSD (boot)
- 3x 2TB HDD
- 1x 64GB SSD
- a whole bunch of 1TB drives stacked around my office, with various FW, USB and eSATA mounts available
I currently have the 3x 2TB HDDs in a 4TB RAIDZ filled just over 50%. Of that ~2.25TB of data, I can easily remove almost 1TB from that equation for a real dataset about 1.5TB in size.
I want to maximize throughput (read and write) for photo-editing/graphic design/book publishing/MySQL and PHP programming. I don't need video editing speeds. I realize there is a leap from playing with hypothetical setups with thumb drives to real, live, working data that pays the bills--but let's throw caution (not quite!) to the wind and see what happens. I've always been more dare-devil than wallflower, and I'm not achieving the throughput I want with my current set, but those are issues for different posts. Patrick, given these requirements, how would you configure the storage, and would you bring Fusion Drive into the mix? Same question for anyone else who would like to chime in.
Sometime in Q1 I'm planning on using the 1TB drives in an eSATA configuration to add additional redundancy and backup to the mix, replacing my stand-alone 5TB NAS. Looking ahead, any suggestions for a PCIe card for driving the external box of drives? PCIe x4 or x8 are available.
Let's have fun!