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Date:      Thu, 28 Apr 2011 16:46:30 +0000
From:      Malcolm Waltz <mwaltz@PACIFIC.EDU>
To:        Daniel O'Connor <doconnor@gsoft.com.au>
Cc:        freebsd-stable List <freebsd-stable@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: ZFS vs OSX Time Machine
Message-ID:  <F203966E-E95F-4762-B1EB-908B2667ABC6@pacific.edu>
In-Reply-To: <537A8F4F-A302-40F9-92DF-403388D99B4B@gsoft.com.au>
References:  <537A8F4F-A302-40F9-92DF-403388D99B4B@gsoft.com.au>

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I doubt the issues you are encountering have much to do with ZFS.

It sounds like you are using TimeMachine over NFS.  Obviously, Apple does n=
ot support that configuration:
http://www.google.com/search?q=3Dtime+machine+nfs+site:apple.com

In my opinion, TimeMachine should only be used with block storage.  If you =
use any kind of file-sharing protocol (AFP, SMB/CIFS or NFS), TimeMachine i=
s implemented using a sparse disk image broken into hundreds or thousands o=
f separate files.  This is a hack at best.

Time machine works very well with locally attached storage, but if you need=
 to use network storage, you might want to try iSCSI:
http://thegreyblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/using-zfs-with-apple-time-machine.h=
tml
http://people.freebsd.org/~rse/iscsi/iscsi.txt


On Apr 28, 2011, at 7:03 AM, Daniel O'Connor wrote:

> Does anyone else use ZFS to store TM backups?
>=20
> I find that whenever my laptop (over wifi!) starts a TM the ZFS machine i=
t's backing up to grinds to a halt.. Other systems streaming stuff over NFS=
 from it also tend to stall..
>=20
> I presume that TM is doing something which causes ZFS some issues but I'm=
 not sure how to find out what the real problem is let alone how to fix it.=
.
>=20
> I am running FreeBSD midget.dons.net.au 8.2-PRERELEASE FreeBSD 8.2-PREREL=
EASE #8 r217094M: Sat Jan  8 11:15:07 CST 2011     darius@midget.dons.net.a=
u:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/MIDGET  amd64
>=20
> It is a 5 disk RAIDZ1 with 1.29Tb free using WD10EADS drives.
>=20
> I don't see any SMART errors or ZFS warnings.
>=20
> I have the following ZFS related tunables
>=20
> vfs.zfs.arc_max=3D"3072M"
> vfs.zfs.prefetch_disable=3D"1"=20
> vfs.zfs.txg.timeout=3D5
> vfs.zfs.cache_flush_disable=3D1
>=20
> Any help appreciated, thanks :)
>=20
> --
> Daniel O'Connor software and network engineer
> for Genesis Software - http://www.gsoft.com.au
> "The nice thing about standards is that there
> are so many of them to choose from."
>  -- Andrew Tanenbaum
> GPG Fingerprint - 5596 B766 97C0 0E94 4347 295E E593 DC20 7B3F CE8C
>=20
>=20
>=20
>=20
>=20
>=20
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