From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Nov 21 17:24:02 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 961B4F5 for ; Wed, 21 Nov 2012 17:24:02 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from matthew@freebsd.org) Received: from smtp.infracaninophile.co.uk (smtp6.infracaninophile.co.uk [IPv6:2001:8b0:151:1:3cd3:cd67:fafa:3d78]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 241308FC16 for ; Wed, 21 Nov 2012 17:24:01 +0000 (UTC) Received: from rufus.webfusion.com (mail.heartinternet.co.uk [79.170.40.31]) (authenticated bits=0) by smtp.infracaninophile.co.uk (8.14.5/8.14.5) with ESMTP id qALHNvqP058576 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-CAMELLIA256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO) for ; Wed, 21 Nov 2012 17:23:58 GMT (envelope-from matthew@freebsd.org) DKIM-Filter: OpenDKIM Filter v2.7.1 smtp.infracaninophile.co.uk qALHNvqP058576 Authentication-Results: smtp.infracaninophile.co.uk/qALHNvqP058576; dkim=none reason="no signature"; dkim-adsp=none (insecure policy) X-Authentication-Warning: lucid-nonsense.infracaninophile.co.uk: Host mail.heartinternet.co.uk [79.170.40.31] claimed to be rufus.webfusion.com Message-ID: <50AD0E2D.3090601@freebsd.org> Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2012 17:23:57 +0000 From: Matthew Seaman User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; FreeBSD amd64; rv:16.0) Gecko/20121120 Thunderbird/16.0.2 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Home "Server" References: <20121121170224.050a75901803b08bf33b56fa@sohara.org> In-Reply-To: <20121121170224.050a75901803b08bf33b56fa@sohara.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Virus-Scanned: clamav-milter 0.97.6 at lucid-nonsense.infracaninophile.co.uk X-Virus-Status: Clean X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.4 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00,SPF_SOFTFAIL autolearn=no version=3.3.2 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.3.2 (2011-06-06) on lucid-nonsense.infracaninophile.co.uk X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2012 17:24:02 -0000 On 21/11/2012 17:02, Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote: > On Wed, 21 Nov 2012 10:52:12 -0600 > Nicholas MIller wrote: > >> My question(s) regard storage. Depending on which case I end up using or >> if i purchase a new one, will have access to either 4(four) or 6(six) hard >> drive bays. The only things I really *need* redundancy for would be the >> centralized backups. Which has me leaning towards zfs. However since I'll >> probably want to use some of the space from the drives in that pool, but >> won't need redundancy I'm not quite sure how to proceed. > > With that many drive bays, and the low cost of disc space I'd go > for a big ZFS mirror for storage and put just about everything on it. You > might have some data that doesn't need to be mirrored but I'll bet there's > not much that wouldn't be a PITA to lose. > Consider using a RAIDZ rather than a Mirror VDev -- you trade off essentially low-latency access for small IOs against more available disk space. 4 drives is OK, but kinda small for a RAIDZ; 6 drives is pretty much right in the sweet spot. I'd also counsel against trying to use traditional filesystems and ZFS in different partitions of the same drive. ZFS is happiest when it has complete control of the drive. You can take a chunk of the drive for boot code no problem, and using a chunk for swap seems to work pretty well too. In fact, if you're going to use ZFS at all, I'd suggest using it for all your filesystems on that machine. Cheers, Matthew