From owner-freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jul 8 19:50:15 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5B39B1065679 for ; Tue, 8 Jul 2008 19:50:15 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kris@FreeBSD.org) Received: from weak.local (freefall.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::28]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B7E1B8FC15; Tue, 8 Jul 2008 19:50:13 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kris@FreeBSD.org) Message-ID: <4873C4FA.2020004@FreeBSD.org> Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 21:50:18 +0200 From: Kris Kennaway User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 (Macintosh/20080421) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: mike References: <20080708100701.57031cda@twoflower.in.publishing.hu> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Thinking of using ZFS/FBSD for a backup system X-BeenThere: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Filesystems List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:50:15 -0000 mike wrote: > On 7/8/08, CZUCZY Gergely wrote: > >> Regardless of this, the system worked quite well. If ZFS were stable, this >> easily could be our backup system. ZFS is great, awesome, but a bit unreliable >> on FreeBSD, still needs some work. > > Really? I thought ZFS for basic things was not too bad in FBSD now. > > By basic I mean simple filesystem creation, snapshots and normal > devices. Not some crazy SAN LUNs and weird volume management stuff. > > I would really love to use FBSD as opposed to a Solaris derivative, > since I know nothing about them and I'd have to dedicate a machine for > it at home. Hrm. I wonder if I could just get by running a Solaris > derivative inside of a VM in VMware or something. ZFS needs careful memory tuning, but really, it's otherwise stable and it can be done. (ports-i386:~>sysctl hw.ncpu hw.ncpu: 4 (ports-i386:~)> sysctl hw.physmem hw.physmem: 4275478528 (ports-i386:~)> uname -a FreeBSD pointyhat.freebsd.org 8.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 8.0-CURRENT #31: Wed Jun 25 19:40:40 UTC 2008 kris@pointyhat.freebsd.org:/usr/src/sys.cvs/amd64/compile/POINTYHAT amd64 (ports-i386:~)> cat /boot/loader.conf vfs.zfs.prefetch_disable=1 vm.kmem_size=1572864000 This machine is highly disk loaded, with 1.08TB of disk, a load average usually between 8-30, currently hosting 94 ZFS filesystems, 898 snapshots, and making heavy use of ZFS features like cloning, incremental snapshot send/receive, etc. The disk workload is highly vnode-intensive, involving concurrent rsyncs over trees containing hundreds of thousands of files, busy NFS exports to about 40 clients, cvs updates, etc, constantly cycling through millions of vnodes. It works just fine. Kris