Tales about using ZFS as a home fileserver
Simon Breden wrote to me the other day, pointing to a nice set of articles he'd written about how he setup a home file server using ZFS. It's a good write up on everything from choosing the hardware to thinking about disk layout and exploring some of the ZFS commands needed to create the server.
This is another case study that shows that ZFS isn't just for enterprises, it can be used quite nicely at home as well - well worth a read and a good introduction to ZFS if you're just getting started.
Good write up by Simon. I hadn't checked his blog out in a long time so I hadn't seen it. ZFS is truly amazing.
Now I need to couple that with MythBuntu in a BrandZ zone and I'm in business!!
Thanks
Posted by Tim on March 13, 2008 at 03:13 PM GMT #
Interesting, I'm wondering if the in-use checking still has effect while the volume's shareiscsi=on.
Such as, I could still newfs the origin volume, even mount somewhere at the local machine. But the iscsi client could still use the storage pool created by the ISCSI device at the same time? Sounds a bit weird :)
Posted by robin guo on March 14, 2008 at 08:43 AM GMT #
Anyone more familiar with Linux may like Nexenta, http://www.nexenta.org/os/Download
I have blogged about it a bit at http://www.thattommyhall.com/category/opensolaris/
His hardware choices were similar to mine, though I use the Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 as it has the same Marvell chipset used in thumper. You can even use the “hd” command seen here http://www.infoworld.com/archives/videoTemplate.jsp?Id=1152&type=Screencasts&tag=Storage (though watch out, the guy doing the demo is a bit of a muppet and creates a non redundant pool)
I have not played with the CIFS stuff yet as I am in the process of moving house.
Tom
Posted by Tom Hall on March 15, 2008 at 01:29 PM GMT #
@robin: I presume that there will be ZFS checksums for each block written, which should enable detection of errors, but as no redundancy was specified, I think that no correction would be possible with this setup. Perhaps the attribute 'copies=2' could be set, if required?
In the setup I used, I was just trying to obtain the largest capacity possible for doing a full backup of all files using a pile of old and different-sized disks.
Posted by Simon Breden on March 30, 2008 at 04:12 PM IST #
@Tom: Yes, that SuperMicro card looks like a good one -- I might use it if/when I build a beefier setup one day :)
Posted by Simon Breden on March 30, 2008 at 04:17 PM IST #
@Tim: Thanks a lot Tim for posting this!
I spent a while researching suitable gear for a home fileserver, and it's been nice to write about it and hopefully encourage others to use Solaris and ZFS to make their own machines, and to remind me how I did it :)
I look forward to hearing about other people's setups: the components they used, and any words of wisdom regarding configuration. It would be great if they would send you their ZFS tales too.
I must say that now I've discovered ZFS and its built-in end-to-end data integrity & simple administration, I can't think of any reason why I would want to use anything else for making a powerful and bullet-proof high capacity fileserver. And I think businesses will love it too.
I think the Linux world would really like to use ZFS, so it would be great if the licensing issue can be resolved -- something about it not being GPL, I think. (I know there is a ZFS on FUSE project)
Finally, I found this blog article very interesting, written by a long-term Linux user who also discovered ZFS:
http://scottstuff.net/blog/articles/2007/10/19/why-not-linux-new-server-part-2
He says: "I’m using it [ZFS] because I’m fed up with losing data to weird RAID issues with Linux, and I believe that OpenSolaris with ZFS will be substantially more reliable long-term."
Posted by Simon Breden on March 30, 2008 at 05:07 PM IST #
Very informative post, and I shall probably end up using OpenSolaris for a new fileserver in the near future.
I have put together an rpm containing the zfs module for fuse. It was made for Ark Linux but should be compatible with any Red Hat derivative.
The source package is available at http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/arklinux/dockyard-devel/SRPMS/zfs-fuse-0.4.0_beta1-1.ark.src.rpm.
Posted by Chris Hills on April 20, 2008 at 10:35 PM IST #