# Optimizing ZFS for Media, Apps, Databases, and Special VDEVs on TrueNAS SCALE

DevFeed: [Optimizing ZFS for Media, Apps, Databases, and Special VDEVs on TrueNAS SCALE](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/optimizing-zfs-for-media-apps-databases-and-special-vdevs-on-truenas-scale-10715.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://technotim.com/posts/zfs-arc-tuning-truenas/>)

Author: Techno Tim

Published: 2025-11-29T13:00:00Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [Techno Tim](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/techno-tim.md>)

Topics: [truenas](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/truenas.md>), [Latency](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/latency.md>), [Databases](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/databases.md>), [Hardware](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/hardware.md>), [Docker](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/docker.md>)

Tags: [databases](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/databases.md>), [docker](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/docker.md>), [hardware](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/hardware.md>), [home-assistant](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/home-assistant.md>), [homelab](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/homelab.md>), [jellyfin](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/jellyfin.md>), [latency](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/latency.md>), [postgres](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/postgres.md>), [storage](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/storage.md>), [truenas](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/truenas.md>)

## AI overview

A practical account of tuning a TrueNAS SCALE ZFS pool for mixed workloads, including media, Docker containers, databases, and configuration files. It discusses ARC, L2ARC, special VDEVs, recordsize, and workload-specific dataset settings.

## Source excerpt

Over the last few weeks I completely re-tuned my TrueNAS SCALE ZFS layout for maximum performance around ARC, L2ARC, special VDEVs, recordsize, and how each dataset interacts with them. I've been chasing this idea of having one large hybrid pool with lots of spinning disks backed by fast low latency storage for specific datasets and data access patterns within the pool. My pool contains large ...