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Date:      Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:51:30 -0600
From:      "James R. Van Artsdalen" <james-freebsd-current@jrv.org>
To:        Artem Belevich <fbsdlist@src.cx>
Cc:        freebsd-current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Help ZFS FreeBSD 8.0 RC2 Write performance issue
Message-ID:  <4AFCC9B2.2050401@jrv.org>
In-Reply-To: <ed91d4a80911121219sa0f3fa3s934791725028a966@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <11167f520911111050j36dd94far667c81e6f5c18e69@mail.gmail.com>	<hdf23m$b6n$1@ger.gmane.org> <20091111204903.GI89052@dan.emsphone.com>	<11167f520911111326v13bb442bt36e853afbecdf834@mail.gmail.com>	<9bbcef730911111352t12188bdajbca71bcf35a5beb5@mail.gmail.com>	<Pine.GSO.4.63.0911121147310.9126@muncher.cs.uoguelph.ca>	<11167f520911121044l74744c30u5a4d9ca008ab863c@mail.gmail.com>	<d5992baf0911121048o76c1543el2b4d9de84ffb107@mail.gmail.com>	<11167f520911121101o403751ddmb544dfaf1c61bf1e@mail.gmail.com> <ed91d4a80911121219sa0f3fa3s934791725028a966@mail.gmail.com>

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Artem Belevich wrote:
> Log seems to be somewhat weak point in ZFS. If you lose your log
> device, you will lose your pool.

In ZFS losing *any* vdev causes a pool to fault!  The log vdev is no
different and is not a weak point in that regard.

In ZFS *every* vdev should be redundant.  In the case of a log this
means a MIRROR since a log cannot be a RAIDZ.  That's not a big deal
since you really should put the MIRROR disks on different controllers,
and preferably using different drives, independent cables & power
supplies, etc.

(I think a cache vdev is different and need not be reliable, but I have
not tested to see what happens if it is not present when the pool is
imported)

The ZIL may have bugs but it's a very important feature to have,
necessary in a transactional filesystem.

A mythical "zfsck" program could probably wipe out the ZIL allowing the
pool to import from the most recent uberblock state and losing a few
seconds of sync's, better than nothing.  Tricking ZFS into importing a
pool with the log vdev missing is probably harder.

> I'd say that SSD are probably the best fit for slog role.

A PCI-e SSD like the OCZ P84 with sustained writes "up to" 600 MB/s
might be a possibility for a high-throughput database server, if it uses
an interface we have a driver for.




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