[rescue] OS for ZFS?

[Joshua Snyder]

I have been very happy with using Freebsd as a Zfs based file server for
the last few years at home.   I am also running an Open Indiana sever at
work serving up VM images via NFS.  Cory is correct, ram usage is a big
deal with Zfs you really want at least 1GB of ram and 4GB or more is
ideal.  You will likely not be able to use deduplication as it basically
requires large amounts of ram and a SSD as an L2Arc.

Also, it is my understanding that you REALLY want to have a 64Bit cpu
architecture when doing Zfs.  This might be specific to Freebsd but as I
understand many of the file system operations are non-optimal if you
have to use a 32bit cpu.  I know in years past using Zfs in a 32bit
Freebsd install was basically asking for corruption.  So this might be a
problem depending on which version of the P4 you have in the Dell.

I would stay away from any Linux ports of Zfs.  Since they are all based
on major rewrites(mostly clean-room re-implementations) of Sun's code
due to licensing issues.  I don't think they are as solid as FreeBsd,
Open Solaris, Open Indiana ect...

			Josh


On 3/25/2013 11:53 AM, Cory Smelosky wrote:
> On 25 Mar 2013, at 12:50, "Scott Newell" <newell+rescue at n5tnl.com> wrote:
> 
>>
>> I'm wanting to build a (headless) machine to play with ZFS.  It won't be
> doing much--light duty file server, some monitoring scripts, rsync backups of
> our VPS, etc.  Looking through the junk pile here at work, I see an Ultra 60
> (2 CPU, 1 or 2 GB ram, couple of drives) or an old Dell Precision workstation
> (2.8GHz P4, 512 MB, couple of old SATA drives).  Does either feel like a
> viable candidate?
>>
>> Any recommendations on an OS?  I've run OpenBSD and debian on them before,
> so I don't anticipate driver problems.
> 
> RAM will be an issue if you want to do say, deduplicationbut otherwise you
> should be fine with the Ultra 60 for basic ZFS stuff I believe.  ZFS won't
> even let you enable it on 512M RAM in BSDs if I recall correctly.
> 
>>
>>
>> thanks!
>> newell  N5TNL
>> _______________________________________________
>> rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
> _______________________________________________
> rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue