From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Jul 18 17:52:43 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EFFB61065676 for ; Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:52:43 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jonathan@onegoodidea.com) Received: from mailhost.significant-whitespace.com (mailhost.significant-whitespace.com [217.155.157.131]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A6D3F8FC18 for ; Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:52:43 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jonathan@onegoodidea.com) Received: from [10.0.1.199] (wifi.significant-whitespace.com [217.155.157.133]) (using TLSv1 with cipher AES128-SHA (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by mailhost.significant-whitespace.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 808B87FC1F6; Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:35:53 +0100 (BST) Message-Id: From: Jonathan Hogg To: Maurice Volaski In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v928.1) Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:35:52 +0100 References: X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.928.1) Cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org, pjd@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Would ZFS and gmirror work well together in a two-node failover cluster? X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:52:44 -0000 On 18 Jul 2008, at 17:06, Maurice Volaski wrote: > I am looking to put together a two-node high-availability cluster > where each node has identical data storage consisting of a set of > internal data drives (separate from the boot drive). I want ZFS to > manage the drives as a JDBOD in a RAIDZ2 configuration. Thus, if an > individual drive misbehaves or fails, ZFS detects and handles the > fault. > > But I'm also looking to mirror this entire setup in real time to a > second identical server. > > Basically, my question is can this work well on FreeBSD while taking > full advantage of ZFS? Have you considered ZFS snapshots and send/receive? This would allow you to maintain a consistent (from ZFS' perspective) replica in near real-time (depending on how frequently the snapshots are taken). If you can afford to lose a small window of data then this would seem the ideal solution and possibly more efficient as the synchronisation of the backup system would occur out-of-line with writing to the main system. This would allow bursts of full-speed writing to the main array followed by a more leisurely synchronisation to the backup. (Apologies if you have already considered and dismissed this option.) Jonathan