Date: Sun, 02 Nov 2008 18:14:30 -0500 From: "Alexandre \"Sunny\" Kovalenko" <gaijin.k@gmail.com> To: John Nielsen <lists@jnielsen.net> Cc: Nicolas Martyanoff <khaelin@gmail.com>, freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: ZFS for a desktop computer Message-ID: <1225667670.12521.7.camel@RabbitsDen> In-Reply-To: <200811011517.37640.lists@jnielsen.net> References: <20081101114717.0ffc2ec8@valhala> <200811011517.37640.lists@jnielsen.net>
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On Sat, 2008-11-01 at 15:17 -0400, John Nielsen wrote: > On Saturday 01 November 2008, Nicolas Martyanoff wrote: > > I'm thinking about switching my main desktop to FreeBSD for various > > reasons (main one, I love it on my laptop and server), and I've been > > considering using ZFS. I'd like to have a disk-modular system, ie.: > > > > - Being able to have mirroring. > > - Being able to add new disks without effort. > > - Being able to add new disks AND mirroring disks (spare disks ?) at > > the same time. > > > > I'm gonna begin with 2x 1TB disks with mirroring, and I'd like to be > > able to add, if needed, new disks, for example 2x 1.5TB to get 2.5TB > > diskspace fully mirrored. The whole process shouldn't need to reinstall > > the system, or to change the slice/partition layout, ie. be totally > > transparent for the data. > > And for this particular need, ZFS seems to be the way to go. > > I'm happily using ZFS on a 32-bit FreeBSD desktop system (that also plays a > home server role). It should meet your disk-modularity requirements above, > with the exception that it's not possible to add disks to a raidZ set > (though it is possible to add additional sets to the same zpool). > > > However, I'm a bit worried about FreeBSD's ZFS implementation: > > > > - I've got a 64bits dual core 2GHz CPU, but can't use an amd64 FreeBSD > > since Xen, NVidia drivers and wine don't work on it; but ZFS is said > > to be unsuitable for i386. > > That's overstating the case. The extra memory headroom on amd64 may make > things simpler, but it's certianly possible to run ZFS on FreeBSD i386 as > long as you have a couple gigs of RAM (I actually only have 1.5 GB) and > follow the tuning guidelines. You should also be willing to monitor your > system and go through one or two fine-tuning cycles Just a "me too". I am using ZFS on my i386 (Core Duo) laptop: / and /boot are UFS2, /usr and /home are ZFS. Main appeal in my case was the startup time after the panic -- doing fsck on 120GB /home was not fun. I have to admit that machine has 3GB of real memory in it, though. -- Alexandre "Sunny" Kovalenko (Олександр Коваленко)
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