From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Dec 1 19:21:39 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 288491065678 for ; Mon, 1 Dec 2008 19:21:39 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kirk@strauser.com) Received: from kanga.honeypot.net (kanga.honeypot.net [IPv6:2001:470:a80a:1:21f:d0ff:fe22:b8a8]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D566C8FC0C for ; Mon, 1 Dec 2008 19:21:38 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kirk@strauser.com) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by kanga.honeypot.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 68361314E1; Mon, 1 Dec 2008 13:21:38 -0600 (CST) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at honeypot.net Received: from kanga.honeypot.net ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (kanga.honeypot.net [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id x-yqoel97Cbn; Mon, 1 Dec 2008 13:21:36 -0600 (CST) Received: from athena.localnet (athena.daycos.com [IPv6:2001:470:c054:1:221:9bff:fe00:de3f]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by kanga.honeypot.net (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 1611C314DA; Mon, 1 Dec 2008 13:21:36 -0600 (CST) From: Kirk Strauser To: Wojciech Puchar Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2008 13:21:43 -0600 User-Agent: KMail/1.10.1 (Linux/2.6.27-7-generic; KDE/4.1.2; x86_64; ; ) References: <200812010959.15647.kirk@strauser.com> <20081201184722.S10680@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl> In-Reply-To: <20081201184722.S10680@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200812011321.43430.kirk@strauser.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Disenchanted with ZFS; alternatives? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2008 19:21:39 -0000 On Monday 01 December 2008 11:49:46 Wojciech Puchar wrote: > UFS is excellent. your problem is that you like to have "lots of > filesystems". why don't just make one or one per disk? For all the usual reasons: faster fsck, ability to set attributes on each filesystem (noexec, noatime, ro), a runaway process writing to /tmp won't cause problems in /var, etc. A big local reason is that Amanda is much easier to configure when you're using a bunch of filesystems because it runs tar with --one-file-system set. If /var is separate from / and I want to back them up separately, I just tell Amanda to dump / and /var. If /var is part of / then I have to say "dump / except for /var (and /tmp and /usr and ...)". > i have one per disk/mirror configuration everywhere except one place where > i made separate filesystem for /var/spool/squid for some reasons. Oh, there are definitely advantages to that setup. It just complicates certain admin functions (see above). With something like ZFS that makes creating new filesystems trivially easy, they're nice to use. > tell me what's your needs and how many/what disks you have. Right now I have a 750GB (with another on order) and a 320GB. The box is a multi-purpose home server with mail, several websites, and a bunch of local file streaming (from MP3 and ripped DVDs to Apple's Time Machine storage). > UFS is best-performer on real load, runs on almost no RAM, but uses more > if available for caching. That's my main beef with ZFS at the moment. I don't mind if it uses a lot of RAM - that's what I bought it for! - but that it doesn't seem to use it effectively (at least on my workload). - Kirk