From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jun 2 18:47:44 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 907CC106566B for ; Tue, 2 Jun 2009 18:47:44 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from zbeeble@gmail.com) Received: from mail-fx0-f163.google.com (mail-fx0-f163.google.com [209.85.220.163]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 13C1F8FC12 for ; Tue, 2 Jun 2009 18:47:43 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from zbeeble@gmail.com) Received: by fxm7 with SMTP id 7so2014004fxm.43 for ; Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:47:43 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:received:in-reply-to:references :date:message-id:subject:from:to:cc:content-type; bh=/P7Gf3ooqiCbXanPKaApdk/Rs9KaszWy2PqdVYb0ziM=; b=TgpQ73W4MEYyQtzMZt0jirLcGlIqcHzUMB3pjrmRlhN5zlj+cSRO0C1CrYkK3hQHi5 XojV7u/K8d8GQ+aQMXyXHSqp/e/WNSBvrovNS7ksIiZsAFKeTAUyb53b0VTubaJpSFaH fSh3RLGg6RUjNXWA/2rd2v6IvGz+Jen50jcVk= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to :cc:content-type; b=lu/3L3hzaDe8btpQ0QBNjganwj0+uj6ECXGyZOVyo8Gbjb/n2Kfjcto2OEXAEz4Igk vAiZ1oLf7au5He++AEpE4kR4Py0vXoTWU2z43b+6Thuds/96mRBP6gygmBuPpC0s/jLM zLRP0cetqAcw00ZtKMxFvNwoHbYWP6CEQ0Pa4= MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.204.63.143 with SMTP id b15mr56177bki.8.1243968462401; Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:47:42 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <8B50CE3F-FCC5-42D6-8FFE-591178F3DFB6@ish.com.au> References: <8B50CE3F-FCC5-42D6-8FFE-591178F3DFB6@ish.com.au> Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 14:47:42 -0400 Message-ID: <5f67a8c40906021147h48bc1c36y5de42fdc0d18677e@mail.gmail.com> From: Zaphod Beeblebrox To: Aristedes Maniatis Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.5 Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org, Dan Naumov Subject: Re: ZFS NAS configuration question X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:47:44 -0000 On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 4:43 AM, Aristedes Maniatis wrote: > > On 31/05/2009, at 4:41 AM, Dan Naumov wrote: > > To top that >> off, even when/if you do it right, not your entire disk goes to ZFS >> anyway, because you still do need a swap and a /boot to be non-ZFS, so >> you will have to install ZFS onto a slice and not the entire disk and >> even SUN discourages to do that. >> > > ZFS on root is still pretty new to FreeBSD, and until it gets ironed out > and all the sysinstall tools support it nicely, it isn't hard to use a small > UFS slice to get things going during boot. And there is nothing wrong with > putting ZFS onto a slice rather than the entire disk: that is a very common > approach. > It's worth noting that there are a few sensible appliance designs... (although as a ZFS server, you might want 4, 8 or 16G in your "appliance"). You could, for instance, boot from flash. If your true purpose is an appliance, this is very reasonable. It means that your appliance "boots" when no "disks" are attached. Useful to instruct the appliance user how to attache disks and do diagnostics, for instance. My own ZFS is 5x 1.5TB disks running on a few week old 8-CURRENT. I gave up waiting for v13 in 7.x. Maybe I should have waited. But I've avoided most of the most recent foo-for-ah by not tracking current incessantly. If I was installing new, I'd probably stick with 7.x for a server... for now. I must admit, however, that the system seems happy with 8-CURRENT. The system boots from a pair of drives in a gmirror. Mot because you can't boot from ZFS, but because it's just so darn stable (and it predates the use of ZFS). Really there are two camps here --- booting from ZFS is the use of ZFS as the machine's own filesystem. This is one goal of ZFS that is somewhat imperfect on FreeBSD at the momment. ZFS file servers are another goal where booting from ZFS is not really required and only marginally beneficial.