M1 or a $500 2013 trash can w/ecc...

[ffk]

This seems to be the time of the year updates happen all over the place, so I'd probably be better off asking this question in a few months time...

I have a 8 exos x18 disks,"RAID10" configuration, in a OWC thunderbolt 3 enclousure connected to a hacintosh on macOS12.6, z490 board, i9 10900k with 64gb ram and things are ok... but I turn the machine on and off alot and bounce back and forth from mac to windows on this machine, I'd rather leave the drives powered on and the host machine running... So M1 might be a good option...

I'm temped to buy a refurbed trash can and add a bunch of ecc ram to it and hook my pool up thunderbolt... but the trash cans are limited to thunderbolt 2 and only have gigabit ethernet. They aren't the fastest machines but for under $500 bucks it'd make a good zfs machine... but... the mini m1 (though lacks ecc ram) I can get 10gbe and thunderbolt 4 but only 16gig of ram, and not that i care... but i'd be "greener"

So... Hows the performance of zfs with the limited ram in the new macs?

Thanks.

[jawbroken]

There will probably be an M2 Mac Mini this year configurable with at least 64 GB of RAM, if that changes your mind. I don't personally value ECC RAM, so I have a Mac Studio, but I know some people have strong opinions about it.

Edit: My previous ZFS server was a Late 2014 Mac Mini with only 16 GB of RAM and performance was fine, though the new server is noticeably faster.

[ffk]

There will probably be an M2 Mac Mini this year configurable with at least 64 GB of RAM

Hopefully your correct on the ram numbers and they don't keep the higher ram only available to mac studios. Price gets stupid with all apple upgrades though...

Edit: My previous ZFS server was a Late 2014 Mac Mini with only 16 GB of RAM and performance was fine, though the new server is noticeably faster.

Thank you for this information.

I started using apple around system 6, and hackintoshes since Tiger (10.4) , it's killing me that I'm even considering a new apple product... Lately, I just can't stand the company one bit.

[erll]

can anyone comment about the actual performance of OpenZFS with 16GB of RAM? particularly from those with M-series Macs and large data pools? i am considering upgrading to a M-series Mac Mini, but am concerned about the RAM limitations...

[lundman]

I have a M2 16Gb mini w/ 10gbe if there is something you wanted to test. I've not felt constrained by the memory on arm64 at all, so far. But I don't have lots of storage attached.

[drewbinsky]

Whether the Mac Mini M1 with 16GB of RAM is suitable for your ZFS needs depends on your specific use case Hoops Grids and performance requirements. If data integrity is critical, you may want to consider other options that support ECC RAM.