ZFS Storage Testing (From D2 to 9990)

So, I was going over the types of Sun storage arrays we have tested with ZFS and came up with this list as a starting point:


D2, MultiPack, T3, T3+, A1000, A5000, A5100, A5200, D1000, SE3120 JBOD, SE3310, SE3320, SE3510, SE3510 JBOD, SE3511, SE6120, SE6130, SE6140, SE6910, SE6920, SE9910, SE9960, SE9970, SE9980, SE9990


Of course the X4500 (Thumper) should be listed here as well. Is it a storage device, or is it a server? It's both!! It used to take two full sized racks to get 16TBs. Now with the X4500, I get 24TBs in one U2 slot, and 48TBs will be available before you know it.


This list is far from complete. It doesn't include all the NAS and other vendor storage we have tested with ZFS.


If you have other storage products you have used with ZFS and would like me to add, let me know. I know ZFS will work with just about any storage you give it, but it's still fun to make a list, and watch it grow.


Posted on: May 24, 2006

Posted by: jwalker

Category: ZFS

Tags: none

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Comments:

Hi there, just started looking at ZFS and was wondering about the following statement from the ZFS admin manual. ******************** ZFS works best when given whole physical disks. Although constructing logical devices using a volume manager, such as Solaris Volume Manager (SVM), Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM), or a hardware volume manager (LUNs or hardware RAID) is possible, these configurations are not recommended. While ZFS functions properly on such devices, less-than-optimal performance might be the result. ****************** How does this relate to say an HDS 9980 which use hardware RAID before the LUN's are presented to the attached hosts ? Thanks a lot. Paul

Posted by Paul Porcelli on May 30, 2006 at 04:37 AM MDT #

There's no problem using hardware RAID devices with ZFS. We do it all the time. But, in general, the fewer hardware or software layers between ZFS and the physical storage the better.

You can find more information on ZFS raid-z on Jeff's Blog

Posted by 192.18.101.5 on June 06, 2006 at 11:30 AM MDT #

Hi Jim - A few questions regarding the use of ZFS on a StorEdge 3320. Is there any rule of thumb here regarding multiple partioning-LUNs at the StorEdge? Would it be a mute point to consider this given the functions of ZFS and containers? Finally , how about the creation of redundant pools-- given that the StorEdge is a 1/0 configuration -- would this just add unecessary overhead? Thanks Ken

Posted by ken mikelinich on August 11, 2006 at 12:35 PM MDT #

Thanks for asking Ken,
I would checkout the mail on zfs-discuss there has been a lot of discussion on what's best in terms of using storage arrays. There are advantages and disadvantages depending on capacity and performance etc... I would try your question there now. We are still working out some best practices too. In our testing, we did a lot of work with two sets of raw disks in a raidz1 or raidz2 setup with some spares. Also, checkout the following sites: Jeff's Blog, ZFS Community
BTW> We dropped the term, "containers", from the ZFS vocabulary. Now, we just have nested file systems.
Cheers,
Jim

Posted by Jim on August 15, 2006 at 11:37 AM MDT #

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