M.2 SSD Caching with SSD Pool

[Enquiries]

I asked this question in the comments of your Lockerstor Gen 3 review and sent an email but figured I would also ask here.

After doing a fair bit of research and watching your reviews on Synology, Qnap, Asustor, etc. I recently purchased the AS6806T. I have loaded the NAS with 6 Samsung 7.6TB SSD drives and configured them for raid 5. I have also installed four Samsung 990 Pro 4TB M.2 SSDs. I have also aggregated the two 10G ports to my 10G capable switch so network throughput is pretty good. My question is will I really gain performance by creating a cache with the M.2 SSDs? Or would I just be better off creating a second volume with the M.2 SSDs?

Appreciate your thoughts!

[jonesnatelye]

I asked this question in the comments of your Lockerstor Gen 3 review and sent an email but figured I would also ask here.

Geometry Dash

After doing a fair bit of research and watching your reviews on Synology, Qnap, Asustor, etc. I recently purchased the AS6806T. I have loaded the NAS with 6 Samsung 7.6TB SSD drives and configured them for raid 5. I have also installed four Samsung 990 Pro 4TB M.2 SSDs. I have also aggregated the two 10G ports to my 10G capable switch so network throughput is pretty good. My question is will I really gain performance by creating a cache with the M.2 SSDs? Or would I just be better off creating a second volume with the M.2 SSDs?
Appreciate your thoughts!

Given your fast SSD RAID 5 and 10G aggregation, a cache likely won’t offer significant gains. A separate volume for frequently accessed, performance-critical files would likely be more beneficial.

[flirhill]

Thanks for reaching out!

[ed]

Thanks for your question — great setup with those Samsung drives and the AS6806T!

Since you’re already running a RAID 5 volume made up entirely of high-performance Samsung 7.6TB SSDs, the benefit of adding an M.2 SSD cache will be minimal or even negligible. Cache is designed to speed up access on slower HDD pools by storing frequently accessed data on faster media. But in your case, your main storage is already ultra-fast SSDs, so caching won’t improve performance much.

Instead, creating a separate volume using your M.2 SSDs is generally the better approach. You could use that volume for workloads that demand ultra-low latency or heavy random I/O — like VM storage, database files, or very active project folders. This lets you leverage the blazing speed of the 990 Pros directly, without any caching layer in between.

Also, aggregating the two 10G ports is a good move to maximize network throughput, ensuring you get the best possible performance across your network.