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Date:      Fri, 3 May 2019 09:09:29 +0200
From:      Borja Marcos <borjam@sarenet.es>
To:        Michelle Sullivan <michelle@sorbs.net>
Cc:        Xin LI <delphij@gmail.com>, owner-freebsd-stable@freebsd.org, Andrea Venturoli <ml@netfence.it>, freebsd-stable <freebsd-stable@freebsd.org>, rainer@ultra-secure.de
Subject:   Re: ZFS...
Message-ID:  <58DA896C-5312-47BC-8887-7680941A9AF2@sarenet.es>
In-Reply-To: <fe6880bc-d40a-2377-6bea-28bfd8229e9f@sorbs.net>
References:  <30506b3d-64fb-b327-94ae-d9da522f3a48@sorbs.net> <CAOtMX2gf3AZr1-QOX_6yYQoqE-H%2B8MjOWc=eK1tcwt5M3dCzdw@mail.gmail.com> <56833732-2945-4BD3-95A6-7AF55AB87674@sorbs.net> <3d0f6436-f3d7-6fee-ed81-a24d44223f2f@netfence.it> <17B373DA-4AFC-4D25-B776-0D0DED98B320@sorbs.net> <70fac2fe3f23f85dd442d93ffea368e1@ultra-secure.de> <70C87D93-D1F9-458E-9723-19F9777E6F12@sorbs.net> <CAGMYy3tYqvrKgk2c==WTwrH03uTN1xQifPRNxXccMsRE1spaRA@mail.gmail.com> <fe6880bc-d40a-2377-6bea-28bfd8229e9f@sorbs.net>

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> On 1 May 2019, at 04:26, Michelle Sullivan <michelle@sorbs.net> wrote:
>=20
>        mfid8   ONLINE       0     0     0

Anyway I think this is a mistake (mfid). I know, HBA makers have been =
insisting on having their firmware getting in the middle,
which is a bad thing.

The right way to use disks is to give ZFS access to the plain CAM =
devices, not thorugh some so-called JBOD on a RAID
controller which, at least for a long time, has been a *logical* =
=E2=80=9CRAID0=E2=80=9D volume on a single disk. That additional layer =
can=20
completely break the semantics of transaction writes and cache flushes.=20=


With some older cards it can be tricky to achieve, from patching source =
drivers to enabling a sysctl tunable or even
flashing the card to turn it into a plain HBA with no RAID features (or =
minimal ones).

If your drives are not called /dev/daX or /dev/adaX you are likely to be =
in trouble. Unless something has really changed recently
you don=E2=80=99t want =E2=80=9Cmfid=E2=80=9D or =E2=80=9Cmfisyspd=E2=80=9D=
.

I have suffered hidden data corruption due to a faulty HBA and failures =
of old disks, and in all cases ZFS has survived brilianty.

And actually ZFS works on somewhat unreliable hardware. The problem is =
not non-perfect hardware, but *evil* hardware with=20
firmware based on some assumptions that won=E2=80=99t work with ZFS.=20

But I agree, non-ECC memory can be a problem. In my case all of the =
servers had ECC.





Borja.=



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