Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 16 May 2017 08:39:36 +0100
From:      Matthew Seaman <matthew@FreeBSD.org>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: ZFS root on single SSD?
Message-ID:  <99fa2537-9fb1-0ccf-d906-39db1c2e2685@FreeBSD.org>
In-Reply-To: <CAEsW2o88qA_YGxHC%2B5nWsi90yJfXKkCSV7tACstK6_hLNgu4HQ@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <CAEsW2o88qA_YGxHC%2B5nWsi90yJfXKkCSV7tACstK6_hLNgu4HQ@mail.gmail.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 4880 and 3156)
--tTlkTI13EKqu1iV41QAeXuuv951kLg7Ut
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="LWTT1Cb8DXvl2keGw3NiOSXjilQuP3t2F";
 protected-headers="v1"
From: Matthew Seaman <matthew@FreeBSD.org>
To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Message-ID: <99fa2537-9fb1-0ccf-d906-39db1c2e2685@FreeBSD.org>
Subject: Re: ZFS root on single SSD?
References: <CAEsW2o88qA_YGxHC+5nWsi90yJfXKkCSV7tACstK6_hLNgu4HQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAEsW2o88qA_YGxHC+5nWsi90yJfXKkCSV7tACstK6_hLNgu4HQ@mail.gmail.com>

--LWTT1Cb8DXvl2keGw3NiOSXjilQuP3t2F
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

On 16/05/2017 06:45, Aaron wrote:
> So, I've been running ZFS root mirror across 2 spinning disks, and I'm
> upgrading my home server/nas and planning on running root on a spare SS=
D.
> However, I'm unsure if it'd be better to run UFS as a single drive root=

> instead of ZFS, although I do love all of the ZFS features (snapshots, =
COW,
> scrubbing, etc) and would still like to keep that for my root drive, ev=
en
> if I'm not mirroring at all. I do notice that FreeBSD has TRIM support =
for
> ZFS (see http://open-zfs.org/wiki/Features#TRIM_Support).
>=20
> So is there a good reason NOT to run ZFS root on a single drive SSD?

No.  Running ZFS on a single device works fine, although you obviously
don't benefit from all the really nice resilience features.

The choice between UFS2 and ZFS basically comes down to three points:

   * performance -- for certain IO patterns, UFS can out-perform ZFS
quite markedly.  Particularly the sort of small, randomly distributed
IOs you get with a RDBMS.  Of course, for database use, the additional
data security you get from ZFS makes it desirable despite this.

   * system resources -- ZFS is memory hungry.  This is not a problem on
most contemporary machines, which tend to have sufficient RAM, but older
machines, VMs or appliances may struggle.

   * data security -- the integrated checksumming in ZFS provides
assurance that the data you're reading now is the same as what you wrote
previously.  Now, this is almost always the case with UFS2 (would be
entirely useless if not), but there is no actual guarantee of it, and
silent data corruption is possible[*].  If you're handling data which is
really important or in particularly large volumes or where your hardware
may prove deficient, then ZFS is indicated.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

[*] With only one drive and one copy of each file, ZFS cannot provide
resilience against data errors, but it will prevent it going unnoticed.


--LWTT1Cb8DXvl2keGw3NiOSXjilQuP3t2F--

--tTlkTI13EKqu1iV41QAeXuuv951kLg7Ut
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc"
Content-Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="signature.asc"

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
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=aFj0
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--tTlkTI13EKqu1iV41QAeXuuv951kLg7Ut--



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?99fa2537-9fb1-0ccf-d906-39db1c2e2685>