Date: Sat, 15 May 2010 18:58:50 -0700 From: Jeremy Chadwick <freebsd@jdc.parodius.com> To: Kaya Saman <SamanKaya@netscape.net> Cc: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Quick ZFS mirroring question for non-mirrored pool Message-ID: <20100516015850.GA55302@icarus.home.lan> In-Reply-To: <4BEF4A73.8060905@netscape.net> References: <4BEF2F9C.7080409@netscape.net> <4BEF3137.4080203@netscape.net> <20100516001351.GA50879@icarus.home.lan> <alpine.GSO.2.01.1005151937300.12887@freddy.simplesystems.org> <4BEF4A73.8060905@netscape.net>
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On Sun, May 16, 2010 at 04:29:23AM +0300, Kaya Saman wrote: > On 05/16/2010 03:51 AM, Bob Friesenhahn wrote: > >As long as the pool is not the boot pool, zfs makes such testing > >quite easy. > > I was under the impression that one needed a UFS2 filesystem in > order to be able to boot FreeBSD as that is the only FS available > upon install..... unlike Solaris10/OpenSolaris which creates the ZFS > filesystem upon install. > > The plan I originally conceived was to use a 40GB solid state disk > as the / (root) directory comprising of all descending file systems, > eg. /usr, /proc, /lib etc... using the UFS2 FS > > ....and then use ZFS for the storage portion of my server using 2TB > Western Digital RE4 Enterprise SATA drives. I would highly recommend doing exactly what you've described here. In fact, it's what I do on two of my home systems (Intel X25-V 40GB drive used for root, /usr, /var, and /tmp, and ZFS for everything else including /home), and what I plan on our servers one Intel 80GB SSDs drop to a more reasonable price. There are many people here who have gone through the pain (IMHO) of getting ZFS to boot on FreeBSD, and it still isn't as simple nor reliable (in all configurations) as it is on OpenSolaris/Solaris 10. There seem to be a large number of "gotchas" which come up when the administrator least expects/wants it (usually during a failure scenario). Also, please reconsider going with Western Digital RE4 2TB drives. These drives are all "GP" (Green Power) drives, which you do not want. There have been numerous reports on the FreeBSD mailing lists about problems with these drives (repeated head offloading/parking causing problems in RAID arrays), and yes, it applies to Enterprise class drive as well; WD has indirectly confirmed the problem in one user's case by sending him a "fixed" firmware. I can point you to threads if you want to read them. I would recommend you choose WD Caviar Black drives instead (cheaper, benefit from TLER when enabled, and throughput is much higher than GP drives), or another vendor of your choice. Don't ask "Who do you recommend?" because everyone has different experiences/preferences; there's no vendor who's 99% reliable right now. :-) -- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc@parodius.com | | Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB |
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