[geeks] Thoughts? (Cheap NAS with nice feature set)

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Fri, 4 Apr 2008, Alois Hammer wrote:

>> ZFS = no (or limited) disasters.  Everything is checksummed and you
>> can run a command that will check the checksums anytime you like
>> while the system is running and the fs is still mounted r/w.
>
> Okay.  How 'bout the "goes real fast"?  Is it at least an improvement
> over UFS?

My limited testing with ZFS on Solaris back when it was in beta was that
ZFS is substantially faster in data operations and unbelievably faster
in metadata operations.

$ork went from a huge pile of UFS2 disk attached to a FreeBSD host to a
huge pile of ZFS disk attached to a Solaris host[0] and saw their
aggregate -sustained- throughput jump from 1Gb/s to saturating 4Gb/s FC.
AFAIK, they're not using even twice the spindles.

I know, "Solaris" and "moves files fast" in the same sentence is a new
one on me, too.


[0] To be fair, the Solaris box is beefier hardware, but the FreeBSD box
     had plenty of CPU power to keep up with file housekeeping and plenty
     of bandwidth to saturate the storage bus.  In fact, I believe the
     Solaris box is PCI-X, whereas the FreeBSD box was PCIe.
-- 
Jonathan Patschke | "There is no such thing as a short of reserves...
Elgin, TX         |  one bank can have a problem...the Fed can print
USA               |  money, there is no shortage."
.                 |     --Jim Glassman, US Economist, JPMorgan Chase