What harddrives to get for ZFS?

[lambchops511]

Planning to build a ZFS storage array.

1] I need 2 TB of initial capacity.
2] I want some redundancy.
3] What drives to get? WD? Seagate? Consumer vs. Enterprise drives?

I also have an extra Intel 160 GB SSD that I can toss in there as well.

 

[lambchops511]

Keep in mind my network is on GB Ethernet, so faster drives are moot?

 

[MarkLuvsCS]

I would suggest looking into what raid-z level you want to use. With ZFS you can add to the storage pools of most/if not all distributions out there, but you can only add vdevs (an actual group or raid of drives) to the storage pool. I would suggest a 5 drive raid-z2 because two parity drives should provide enough redundancy for your data. I know it's kind of expensive, but i believe ZFS redundancy only works on a vdev level. Speed of nearly any ZFS array should easily saturate GB ethernet, but honestly aside of TBs of data transfer gigE should easily & quickly handle everyday file transfers.

Google's hard drive study a few years back showed little difference between some of the 'enterprise' models vs. consumer. They definitely come with longer warranties though so honestly cost difference should be more attributed to warranty length than most.