Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:47:46 +0000 From: "Joao Barros" <joao.barros@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: <70e8236f0811100647o4cd98966o8108a0e7ecc08bb5@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <200811011517.37640.lists@jnielsen.net> References: <20081101114717.0ffc2ec8@valhala> <200811011517.37640.lists@jnielsen.net>
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On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 7:17 PM, John Nielsen <lists@jnielsen.net> 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 > >> - It's said you can't boot from a ZFS pool. > > There are patches available to allow this but frankly I don't see the Can you point out those patches? Thx > appeal. I think it makes much more sense to have / (including /boot) be a > regular UFS2 filesystem on a small partition. If something goes wrong you > can boot from a CD or single-user and not have to worry about getting your > ZFS pools back online before you can even start troubleshooting the system. > Since (unlike Solaris) FreeBSD doesn't force you to dedicate whole disks to > ZFS, this is a viable option. As Miroslav mentioned you can make a small > root partition on two disks and set them up as a gmirror, leaving the > remainder of the disks available for your zpool(s). > >> So could you please tell me if using ZFS is ok for me, or should I use >> a gmirror system (but I don't think I can easily add new disks to this). > > You could get most if not all of what you're after with gmirror, gvirstor, > gjournal, etc but it sounds like ZFS is really what you're after and I > think you'll be fine. I haven't actually added any disks to my setup since > I switched to ZFS but it's nice knowing that I can. Add to that cheap > snapshots, checksumming and self-healing and easy administration and I tink > it's an easy sale. > > JN -- Joao Barros
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