I&#x27;ve seen L2ARC (and SLOGs too) die before, and ZFS kept on working.<p>Just expect a hit on performance if your workload leans heavily on the L2ARC. Also, in my experience, L2ARC is a lot less useful than a lot of people think; doing some workload characterisation is an interesting and informative exercise.<p>As an aside: an SLOG is usually useful. Unless your workload is effectively read-only, a SLOG can make a pool perform close to SSD levels for most workloads on the cheap. Just be careful to get a quality SSD for the SLOG.