[rescue] OS for ZFS?

[Cory Smelosky]

On 25 Mar 2013, at 13:19, "Joshua Snyder" <josh at imagestream.com> wrote:

>
> 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

ZFS on Linux (kernel-mode, not a garbage user mode implementation) seems to
have Nexenta and Sunacle copyrights in itat least in the user land utilities.
It's also CDDL-licensed so it might not be a 100% cleanroom implementation.
It's still a bit iffy though.  I could actually switch completely to a BSD
again.  Huh.  No idea why i'm using a Linux aside from the tri-NIC bonding
which I can probably do in BSD...

>
> 			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
> _______________________________________________
> rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue