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Date:      Sun, 20 Jan 2019 10:24:05 +0100 (CET)
From:      Maciej Jan Broniarz <gausus@gausus.net>
To:        andy thomas <andy@time-domain.co.uk>
Cc:        Rich <rincebrain@gmail.com>, freebsd-fs <freebsd-fs@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: ZFS on Hardware RAID
Message-ID:  <1691666278.63816.1547976245836.JavaMail.zimbra@gausus.net>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.21.1901200834470.12592@mail0.time-domain.co.uk>
References:  <1180280695.63420.1547910313494.JavaMail.zimbra@gausus.net> <92646202.63422.1547910433715.JavaMail.zimbra@gausus.net> <CAOeNLurgn-ep1e=Lq9kgxXK%2By5xqq4ULnudKZAbye59Ys7q96Q@mail.gmail.com> <alpine.BSF.2.21.1901200834470.12592@mail0.time-domain.co.uk>

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Hi,

I am thinking about the scenario with ZFS on single disks configured to RAI=
D0 by hw raid.
Please correct me, if i'm wrong, but HW Raid uses a dedicated unit to proce=
ss all RAID related work (eg. parity checks).
With ZFS the job is done by CPU. How significant is the performance loss in=
 that particular case?

mjb


----- Oryginalna wiadomo=C5=9B=C4=87 -----
Od: "andy thomas" <andy@time-domain.co.uk>
Do: "Rich" <rincebrain@gmail.com>
DW: "Maciej Jan Broniarz" <gausus@gausus.net>, "freebsd-fs" <freebsd-fs@fre=
ebsd.org>
Wys=C5=82ane: niedziela, 20 stycze=C5=84 2019 9:45:21
Temat: Re: ZFS on Hardware RAID

I have to agree with your comment that hardware RAID controllers add=20
another layer of opaque complexity but for what it's worth, I have to=20
admit ZFS on h/w RAID does work and can work well in practice.

I run a number of very busy webservers (Dell PowerEdge 2950 with LSI=20
MegaRAID SAS 1078 controllers) with the first two disks in RAID 1 as the=20
FreeBSD system disk and the remaining 4 disks configured as RAID 0 virtual=
=20
disks making up a ZFS RAIDz1 pool with 3 disks plus one hot spare.=20
With 6-10 jails running on each server, these have been running for=20
years with no problems at all.

Andy

On Sat, 19 Jan 2019, Rich wrote:

> The two caveats I'd offer are:
> - RAID controllers add an opaque complexity layer if you have problems
> - e.g. if you're using single-disk RAID0s to make a RAID controller
> pretend to be an HBA, if the disk starts misbehaving, you have an
> additional layer of behavior (how the RAID controller interprets
> drives misbehaving and shows that to the OS) to figure out whether the
> drive is bad, the connection is loose, the controller is bad, ...
> - abstracting the redundancy away from ZFS means that ZFS can't
> recover if it knows there's a problem but the underlying RAID
> controller doesn't - that is, say you made a RAID-6, and ZFS sees some
> block fail checksum. There's not a way to say "hey that block was
> wrong, try that read again with different disks" to the controller, so
> you're just sad at data loss on your nominally "redundant" array.
>
> - Rich
>
> On Sat, Jan 19, 2019 at 11:44 AM Maciej Jan Broniarz <gausus@gausus.net> =
wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I want to use ZFS on a hardware-raid array. I have no option of making i=
t JBOD. I know it is best to use ZFS on JBOD, but
>> that possible in that particular case. My question is - how bad of an id=
ea is it. I have read very different opinions on that subject, but none of =
them seems conclusive.
>>
>> Any comments and especially case studies are most welcome.
>> All best,
>> mjb
>> _______________________________________________
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>> https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-fs
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>


----------------------------
Andy Thomas,
Time Domain Systems

Tel: +44 (0)7866 556626
Fax: +44 (0)20 8372 2582
http://www.time-domain.co.uk



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