Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2007 09:43:19 -0300 From: Patrick Tracanelli <eksffa@freebsdbrasil.com.br> To: Eric Anderson <anderson@freebsd.org> Cc: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Xsan (Apple) on FreeBSD Message-ID: <46B1D167.4030206@freebsdbrasil.com.br> In-Reply-To: <46B12D0C.20808@freebsd.org> References: <46B0F505.8090102@freebsdbrasil.com.br> <a969fbd10708011502n5dd8034m7cc0abef3a62c5e6@mail.gmail.com> <46B10798.5050504@freebsdbrasil.com.br> <200708011536.37926.matt@ixsystems.com> <46B12D0C.20808@freebsd.org>
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Eric Anderson wrote: > Matt Olander wrote: >> On Wednesday 01 August 2007 3:22 pm, Patrick Tracanelli wrote: >>> Hello Jeff, >>> >>> Jeff Mohler wrote: >>>> Im yet to hear of a large Xsan install that stayed Xsan once it grew. >>>> >>>> Most, if not all, have gone to netapp or umm..Isilon (spelling) that >>>> ive >>>> been close to. Latest large dump of Xsan that I know of was >>>> Current TV >>>> in San Francisco, for Isilon. >>> Hmm, good to know. I have tested XServe RAID only, which has shown to be >>> a good solution as storage system for the usage profile I need, but >>> Xsan, never saw it working. Believed it to be the usual path to follow, >>> but have hear of people running Stornext instead of xsan. >>> >>> So, now my question goes on a different path. Will Isilon OneFS run >>> FreeBSD? I head from people at Zoic Studios it is based on FreeBSD, but >>> I am not sure how true this information is. Anyway, "based on" wont >>> always mean fully compatible. >>> >>> Are you aware of OneFS running on FreeBSD? >> >> It is indeed true. OneFS is FreeBSD. The Isilon product is really neat >> and you can buy it modularly, starting with just one unit. > > To be clear, OneFS isn't a solution to add to FreeBSD - it is an > all-in-one solution, that happens to be built with FreeBSD (or parts of > it anyway). It's like a NetApp. You don't run NetApp on FreeBSD, you > use whatever clients you want, and they connect *to* Isilon or NetApp. > As far as I understand, they are all just NFS/CIFS/iSCSI > servers/targets. There's really no solution for sharing a SAN block > device safely using FreeBSD (using the same blocks with the same fs). > That would require a clustered filesystem, and there is no such beast > for FreeBSD at this point. Simultaneous read-write activity from > different hosts to the same file system leads to Bad Stuff. Hello Eric, Thank you for clearing up some things. I believed OneFS to be an extension the the file system which would allow shared access. So, OneFS seem to be exclusively used by the appliance itself, as you mention. FreeBSD unfortunately don't have a shared file system (it would be a solution to this matter, combining a shared FS with ggate and gmirror, or using a central gvirstor/zfs storage solution, 100% FreeBSD-only). It really is a missing piece of feature which would boost usage/combination of many other ones. I dont know about iSCSI support on FreeBSD. A quick research on the archieves seem to show that there is no iSCSI support at this time. So NFS/CIFS and something like that would the option? In this case, a FreeBSD solution seem a lot more flexible than a storage appliance. In fact I run NFS today, but performance is becoming a problem as the usage increases. I have never used CIFS on Unix-to-Unix enviroment, and I dont believe it to be better than NFS anyway. But maybe I should give it a try. Is there any other CIFS implementation other than Samba? Samba just happen to have so many features Ill never need in this enviroment. Is there any chance it will perform better than NFS? BTW, what about NFS4? Is performance improvement a goal, or just security/kerberos/auth stuff? I have been running NFS4 with gssd, which shall decrease performance. Ill do some benching without gssd comparing to NFS3. > I'd love to learn more about OneFS and the FreeBSD integration from > someone at Isilon. It's a great success story that would be great to > boast about on the FreeBSD website. I have contacted Isilon regarding FreeBSD usage and possibilities. If I hear good news from someone there, maybe it is a conversation to start on advocacy@. > > Eric Thank you Eric. > > > -- Patrick Tracanelli
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