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Date:      Sun, 23 Mar 2008 07:00:26 -0500 (CDT)
From:      Wes Morgan <morganw@chemikals.org>
To:        Daniel Andersson <engywook@gmail.com>
Cc:        freebsd-fs@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: A few questions about ZFS
Message-ID:  <alpine.BSF.1.00.0803230647400.16667@ibyngvyr.purzvxnyf.bet>
In-Reply-To: <24adbbc00803220813n5d0e4cd6r2f896e16365c6b36@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <24adbbc00803211521t26b271e5wc8e3a27f228e29e4@mail.gmail.com> <47E45891.5010004@enderzone.com> <24adbbc00803220813n5d0e4cd6r2f896e16365c6b36@mail.gmail.com>

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On Sat, 22 Mar 2008, Daniel Andersson wrote:

> Thanks for the reply! Would it still crash if I added two more disks to even
> out the load on the disks? Or will it still be a memory issue?
>
> On 22/03/2008, Ender <ender@enderzone.com> wrote:
>>
>> Daniel Andersson wrote:
>>> Hiya!
>>>
>>> I've been thinking about trying out zfs for a while now. But as it is
>> still
>>> kind of
>>> experimental I'm not sure if it'll be worth it. I'm currently running
>> FBSD
>>> 7.0 i386
>>> but if I go with zfs I'll probably reinstall to amd64. Anyhow, the box
>> acts
>>> primarily as a fileserver/fw/router. It has only 1gb ram though, which
>> seems
>>>
>>> to be the minimum according to things I've read. If rtorrent uses 900+mb
>>> ram,
>>> and zfs needs 1gb to run properly, what will happen? crash? Even if I
>> got
>>> another gb of ram, would it work under heavy writing/reading? I would
>>> probably
>>> set up a /zfs for it and leave the root, usr, etc partitions to UFS2.
>>>
>>>
>> http://groups.google.com/group/muc.lists.freebsd.current/browse_thread/thread/436fa863a6be7f24/a245a67bc6423b62?lnk=raot
>>> Doesn't seem promising, I rarely hash stuff though. If it starts
>> crashing I
>>> would have to.
>>>
>>> Would I be better of setting up some softraid or vinum?
>>>
>>> dmesg:
>>> http://pastebin.org/24780
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Daniel Andersson
>>>
>>> P.S. How do I reply? RE: A few questions about ZFS in the subject?
>>>
>>
>>
>> Even with AMD64 and a massive amount of ram (8+G) zfs will still crash
>> under heavy load. Experimentation is always worth it, just do not use it
>> for anything important.

I am using zfs with a 6-disk raidz (2.5tb) pool and another non-replicated 
pool as root. It is used as a media server/gateway/firewall. I've had no 
zfs related panics since moving to a core 2 cpu with 4gb ram. I think I've 
encountered the zfs/nfs deadlock twice, requiring a reboot each time. The 
load isn't stellar, but I was using it to rip/encode DVDs, download a 
dozen or so torrents and stream several media files all at the same time. 
The only instance where there was a hiccup was if I was extracting several 
large archives simultaneously, the media streamer would hiccup once or 
twice until the system compensated better for the sudden increase in disk 
I/O.

All in all, with zfs, I feel like the two times I did have to reboot I 
avoided a lengthy fsck. The ability to scrub the disks and detect data 
corruption (which has not occurred) as well as the plusses of pooled 
storage without spending far too much on a raid controller outweigh any 
potential downsides. Now if only I could find a PCIe SATA controller with 
4 or 8 ports that isn't one of those expensive RAIDs (prefer to invest 
more in disks than controllers).




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