Hi,
I have an 8-core Mac Pro that I want to install ZFS on for my file server. The FB/ECC memory on this will benefit me greatly, I think. But the Mac Pro's only have 4 HDD bays. I am planning on purchasing an SSD card to run the OS and Apps so I can save the 4 bays for ZFS. However, I also want to use RaidZ2, and with 4 bays, that means I only get half the capacity. I have a NexStar HX4R that I will use in individual mode. I have read up enough to know to never use hardware RAID, but to let ZFS manage it itself. If I could use that instead, that would give me 8 total drives, allowing me to use 75% of my storage space. I am toying with the idea of getting another NexStar, but this time, just the HX4, as it's cheaper and I won't be using the hardware RAID anyway and giving me 12 drives. I wouldn't even think of doing this if you could add HDD's to an array, but since you can't, I want to future proof the heck out of this thing.
I do know that to see the individual drives, that I would need an eSata card with multiport capabilities. My question is, would this work? Will ZFS be able to use RaidZ2 when half the drives are in the case and half external? As far as I can tell, eSata is capable of this, but I'm not 100% sure. The external enclosure does also can use USB 3.0 as well as eSata, but I think I remember reading somewhere that ZFS and USB don't get along. Is this true?
Would something else work better than this solution?
Thanks,
Scott