deciding UFS vs ZFS

[Paul Kraus]

>> Assuming you mean ProLiant 712317-001 Ultra Micro Tower Server, those cost
>> around $400 with 2GB of RAM.  1GB/TB of RAM to storage, it will need more
>> RAM according to:
>> "A general rule of thumb is 1GB of RAM for every 1TB of storage.”
>> https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/filesystems-zfs.html

That is an overly generic recommendation. For the ZFS ARC to be of any real use you really need a minimum of 2GB RAM. The 1GB per 1TB recommendation is a bastardization of the recommendation from the ZFS-List. If you enable Dedupe it should really be a REQUIREMENT to have 1GB FRRE RAM for each 1TB of NET storage.

Having said that, the more RAM you can throw at ZFS (and the ARC) the better off you will be for any configuration. It all depends on your workload.

--
Paul Kraus
paul at kraus-haus.org