From owner-freebsd-amd64@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Jul 4 09:52:36 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F1A641065670 for ; Sat, 4 Jul 2009 09:52:36 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from petefrench@ticketswitch.com) Received: from constantine.ticketswitch.com (constantine.ticketswitch.com [IPv6:2002:57e0:1d4e:1::3]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B6F0E8FC1A for ; Sat, 4 Jul 2009 09:52:36 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from petefrench@ticketswitch.com) Received: from dilbert.rattatosk ([10.64.50.6] helo=dilbert.ticketswitch.com) by constantine.ticketswitch.com with esmtps (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.69 (FreeBSD)) (envelope-from ) id 1MN1v8-000Jur-Cv; Sat, 04 Jul 2009 10:52:34 +0100 Received: from petefrench by dilbert.ticketswitch.com with local (Exim 4.69 (FreeBSD)) (envelope-from ) id 1MN1v8-000Hj7-Ba; Sat, 04 Jul 2009 10:52:34 +0100 To: mwm@mired.org, ogreve@millennics.com In-Reply-To: <1BBC202D-920C-480A-B59D-BA0F1581E301@millennics.com> Message-Id: From: Pete French Date: Sat, 04 Jul 2009 10:52:34 +0100 Cc: freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Howto do SW RAID? X-BeenThere: freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Porting FreeBSD to the AMD64 platform List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:52:37 -0000 > I must say, ZFS sounds very cool, yet.... the experimental thingy > attached to it is somewhat off-putting at present. I noticed a remark > about the kernel memory tuning possibly being hasslesome. I'm not None of those things are true anymore on the latest -STABLE and amd64. I use a ZFS based machine for backup, much as you describe. Nightly rsync and continuous stream of data to a mysql slave. ZFS gives you the distinct advantage of being bale to sake snapshots - so I have dailys for the last 5 days, and I keep the sunday one of those as weeklies going back as far as I have disc space for. All online and not actually taking up any significant space as snapshots will only use disc space for the changes. If you are clever with symobilc links you can even arrange it so your database snapshot is actually online inside your mysql linstance. One of my machine has the live database, plus 'live-7am', 'live-9am', 'live-11am' so if people make a mess of a table then they can grab the data from no older than two hours ago instantly "insert into live.table_i_screwed_up select * from live-9am.table_i_screwed_up;" Given your system I'd acquire a 3rd drive (4 gig flash card will do) for boot and then make a ZFS mirror our of the existing two and stick everything significant onto that. It works very nicely indeed. -pete.