From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Mar 16 22:52:21 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 056B11065672 for ; Mon, 16 Mar 2009 22:52:21 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from manlief01@gmail.com) Received: from wf-out-1314.google.com (wf-out-1314.google.com [209.85.200.174]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D20458FC12 for ; Mon, 16 Mar 2009 22:52:20 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from manlief01@gmail.com) Received: by wf-out-1314.google.com with SMTP id 27so3199672wfd.7 for ; Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:52:20 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:received:date:message-id:subject :from:to:content-type:content-transfer-encoding; bh=pWtcdVz1EwH8iMvgS9HiXOurN10vQoUOcIwnZ+aRSCg=; b=aYJ2el/3gYF/43b69MA3KYVxeHLTaggmduICVfMSSq//AkGr0/8koZsSfmcKfoz+Ba 9FJuBBiCzOuwf/V03ZbDCVHL5EgLDsrbPavt+sY1CrfCscKpqEokXiZillgxxusV8zqw GH566VNa7te2RgJtu5IK2+mWDTSWQc6kc8YHE= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:date:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; b=XbK4bG9vm/DI1qIsg5rSYWsSkw4sJaPRZ6kg6O4IKbmqVZr5xBTLYKm3Ep3dezGSyx 70TpfmmuzjFK3JyQNY0vo1EItU010A9eu0fWDhglcOCFpONTIlzNZVrHHcOjxsA2KlC1 uPl+ol8pNb+Fg6YW8RILqdqkuUmsINugW/Rus= MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.142.80.12 with SMTP id d12mr2399269wfb.163.1237242516551; Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:28:36 -0700 (PDT) Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2009 18:28:36 -0400 Message-ID: <8958e9ea0903161528j492bb14ak36c6c3b22ed66a5c@mail.gmail.com> From: Mike Manlief To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Software RAID performance? RAID-Z or vinum and RAID5? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2009 22:52:21 -0000 I'm looking into moving a workstation from Ubuntu 10 to FreeBSD 7.1 (both amd64) and I'm a bit worried about storage -- specifically moving from mdadm, which performs very well for me. Current in Linux I use an mdadm RAID5 of 5 disks. After investigating FreeBSD storage options, RAID-Z sounds optimal[1]. I'd like to avoid levels 3 and 1 due to write bottlenecks[2], and level 0 for obvious reasons. Migrating from the existing mdadm is not an issue. I also do not plan to boot from the software array. Various docs/postings seem to indicate that using ZFS/RAID-Z under FreeBSD will destroy my computer, run over my cat, and bail out the investment banking industry. Will it really perform that poorly on a Phenom and 8GB RAM? Significantly more resources than mdadm in Linux? How about compared to RAID 5 under vinum? Thanks, ~Mike Manlief 1: The ability to read the array with the Linux FUSE ZFS implementation is very appealing; don't care about performance for such inter-op scenarios. Copy-on-write sounds awesome too. 2: ...and even level 5, now that I've learned of RAID-Z.