Date: Mon, 4 Jul 2016 21:31:32 +0200 From: Julien Cigar <julien@perdition.city> To: Jordan Hubbard <jkh@ixsystems.com> Cc: Ben RUBSON <ben.rubson@gmail.com>, freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Subject: Re: HAST + ZFS + NFS + CARP Message-ID: <20160704193131.GJ41276@mordor.lan> In-Reply-To: <AE372BF0-02BE-4BF3-9073-A05DB4E7FE34@ixsystems.com> References: <678321AB-A9F7-4890-A8C7-E20DFDC69137@gmail.com> <20160630185701.GD5695@mordor.lan> <6035AB85-8E62-4F0A-9FA8-125B31A7A387@gmail.com> <20160703192945.GE41276@mordor.lan> <20160703214723.GF41276@mordor.lan> <65906F84-CFFC-40E9-8236-56AFB6BE2DE1@ixsystems.com> <B48FB28E-30FA-477F-810E-DF4F575F5063@gmail.com> <61283600-A41A-4A8A-92F9-7FAFF54DD175@ixsystems.com> <20160704183643.GI41276@mordor.lan> <AE372BF0-02BE-4BF3-9073-A05DB4E7FE34@ixsystems.com>
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[-- Attachment #1 --] On Mon, Jul 04, 2016 at 11:56:57AM -0700, Jordan Hubbard wrote: > > > On Jul 4, 2016, at 11:36 AM, Julien Cigar <julien@perdition.city> wrote: > > > > I think the discussion evolved a bit since I started this thread, the > > original purpose was to build a low-cost redundant storage for a small > > infrastructure, no more no less. > > > > The context is the following: I work in a small company, partially > > financed by public funds, we started small, evolved a bit to a point > > that some redundancy is required for $services. > > Unfortunately I'm alone to take care of the infrastructure (and it's > > only 50% of my time) and we don't have that much money :( > > Sure, I get that part also, but let’s put the entire conversation into context: > > 1. You’re looking for a solution to provide some redundant storage in a very specific scenario. > > 2. We’re talking on a public mailing list with a bunch of folks, so the conversation is also naturally going to go from the specific to the general - e.g. “Is there anything of broader applicability to be learned / used here?” I’m speaking more to the larger audience who is probably wondering if there’s a more general solution here using the same “moving parts”. of course..! It has been an interesting discussion, learned some things, and it's always enjoyable to get different point of view. > > To get specific again, I am not sure I would do what you are contemplating given your circumstances since it’s not the cheapest / simplest solution. The cheapest / simplest solution would be to create 2 small ZFS servers and simply do zfs snapshot replication between them at periodic intervals, so you have a backup copy of the data for maximum safety as well as a physically separate server in case one goes down hard. Disk storage is the cheap part now, particularly if you have data redundancy and can therefore use inexpensive disks, and ZFS replication is certainly “good enough” for disaster recovery. As others have said, adding additional layers will only increase the overall fragility of the solution, and “fragile” is kind of the last thing you need when you’re frantically trying to deal with a server that has gone down for what could be any number of reasons. > > I, for example, use a pair of FreeNAS Minis at home to store all my media and they work fine at minimal cost. I use one as the primary server that talks to all of the VMWare / Plex / iTunes server applications (and serves as a backup device for all my iDevices) and it replicates the entire pool to another secondary server that can be pushed into service as the primary if the first one loses a power supply / catches fire / loses more than 1 drive at a time / etc. Since I have a backup, I can also just use RAIDZ1 for the 4x4Tb drive configuration on the primary and get a good storage / redundancy ratio (I can lose a single drive without data loss but am also not wasting a lot of storage on parity). You're right, I'll definitively reconsider the zfs send / zfs receive approach. > > Just my two cents. There are a lot of different ways to do this, and like all things involving computers (especially PCs), the simplest way is usually the best. > Thanks! Julien > - Jordan > -- Julien Cigar Belgian Biodiversity Platform (http://www.biodiversity.be) PGP fingerprint: EEF9 F697 4B68 D275 7B11 6A25 B2BB 3710 A204 23C0 No trees were killed in the creation of this message. However, many electrons were terribly inconvenienced. [-- Attachment #2 --] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iQIcBAABCgAGBQJXermQAAoJELK7NxCiBCPAxloP/0EHtudE2MmOGNtgttmTGNGN KLLGYcaoDZI4sn2t/q+48oBNfTDPdkHnsXDhGgVRXcQ4yXTuBg9IzcqezwNB+lGb FaC5ckFLqBlXzXUo2Y4lia6T45MtH4QrZn9GPH6O4QfvIQp0ulmCEtVVIUKw/fuA tanEGTTwc6qMhdzd1Uopml2HZJ74SzGmavFf/N4eP3Gnzz/p9a6SQjCH7TAtvxH7 ck6AM3teS79eGdb2BmU6Ehs9A10LZefnleRfMLi2V7RDNNXP2oI4ohI00dTRz1Cf GrcmPB4oRlGEonbMBytYZVOTdrwCGsFyrXTnT7xy4XHCg/9ndUZDcnnDTD8syEBL CFz8l/uZB++l0lAs8a+RyarTNRSMvTznrS039IaOHhD23M/zGXLGVe8EwQlpkwom I/3UUQeQI1291Xnq12PPJUKE2SK8gZ9eJWswO97eXJow7ky1L2bIc3HFUkpkDu9y pPbrMtzslTdfCb4w2SHlE1yJn0/Mo/FyKMuPKbHP5uBDvVoc5PpH912Tcg544Ose ChriAsDJ1Fy23pg52wj/W5zXCzfMjTKLmokNwV3xH4c8wbpFo7jm7IR9lA8BoFME dNSSnLPF3mPFAc4TUM0hS980cPAYE5ovoKMwsOWPR0YEhwtFGZp5xUdpMdkrpnAA SbW49On9C/KPLhfK+NFp =TMxe -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----help
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