Posting links on basics, pool layout and special vdevs.
I don’t know what your Bioinformatics workload looks like or it’s size. See pool layout for your tradeoffs. The more random access or database like interactions, the better Mirrors or NVMe pools look.
HBA needs to be in IT Mode or plain HBA, no RAID.
L2ARC may help for reads. You have to look at the ARC stats using arc_summary once you are up and running with your regular data.
SLOG can be useful but only for synchronous writes and has suggested requirements as PLP, power loss prevention. That’s covered in the primer and online documents, hardware guide section. L2ARC and SLOG can be removed from a pool without destroying it. Special Vdevs, require pool destruction and recreation, usually. Should be covered in the links below.
You might consider a different system or motherboard as you won’t really have much for expansion with your current proposed.
BASICS
iX Systems pool layout whitepaper
Special VDEV (sVDEV) Planning, Sizing, and Considerations