From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri May 30 17:47:55 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 0E5342E1 for ; Fri, 30 May 2014 17:47:55 +0000 (UTC) Received: from systemdatarecorder.org (ec2-54-246-96-61.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com [54.246.96.61]) (using TLSv1.1 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (Client CN "localhost", Issuer "localhost" (not verified)) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 9D1292F34 for ; Fri, 30 May 2014 17:47:53 +0000 (UTC) Received: from nereid (84-253-211-213.bb.dnainternet.fi [84.253.211.213]) (authenticated bits=0) by systemdatarecorder.org (8.14.4/8.14.4/Debian-2ubuntu2.1) with ESMTP id s4UHl61K008570 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 bits=256 verify=NOT) for ; Fri, 30 May 2014 17:47:06 GMT Date: Fri, 30 May 2014 20:47:45 +0300 From: Stefan Parvu To: FreeBSD Questions Subject: Re: ZFS Recommendations for a new server Message-Id: <20140530204745.be5562a60cfead503d762b96@systemdatarecorder.org> In-Reply-To: References: Organization: systemdatarecorder.org X-Mailer: Sylpheed 3.4.1 (GTK+ 2.24.22; amd64-portbld-freebsd11.0) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.18 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 30 May 2014 17:47:55 -0000 Hi, > The new server has a 2 x 1TB RE4 3ware 9650SE RAID and I have friends that > tell me is actually better to use ZFS RAID instead of HW RAID1. Is this > true? Why so? It depends. You need to measure your applications with and without hdw RAID. For example we are migrating some workloads from Debian 7 to FreeBSD 10 and ZFS. We are using LSI MegaRaid 2208 controller and SATA disks. We have tested on FreeBSD 10 different setups, see below: 1. HDW RAID 10 - UFS2 Seq Disk IO Test 5MB 500MB F1.1 W 1.2 GB/sec 1.2 GB/sec R 1.2 GB/sec 3.9 GB/sec Random Disk IO 500 Files 2500Files F1. 2 RR 872 MB/sec 271 MB/sec F1.3 RW 920 MB/sec 1065 MB/sec RR 1048 MB/sec 1089 MB/sec 2. HDW RAID 6 - UFS2 Seq Disk IO Test 5MB 500MB F2.1 W 1.3 GB/sec 900 MB/sec R 1.0 GB/sec 3.8 GB/sec Random Disk IO 500 Files 2500Files F2. 2 RR 884 MB/sec 1188 MB/sec F2.3 RW 760 MB/sec 79 MB/sec RR 866 MB/sec 90 MB/sec 3. RAIDZ2 Pool, 6 disks, ZFS 2500 Files F3 RW 310 MB/sec RR 350 MB/sec So for our applications it seems ZFS is faster. We need RAM for caching but that is not a problem anymore. Seq R - Sequantial reading Seq W - Sequantial writting RR - Random Reads RW - Random Writes -- Stefan Parvu