Best Hard Drives for ZFS Server (Updated Oct 2022)

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Updated October 19, 2022. Today’s question comes from Jeff…. Q. What drives should I buy for my ZFS server?  Answer: Here’s what I recommend, considering a balance of cost per TB, performance, and reliability.  I prefer NAS or Enterprise-class drives since they are designed to run 24/7 and also are better at tolerating vibration from … Read more

Port Forwarding with Verizon Wireless NAT

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I thought I’d do a followup to my last post, because this is another issue with Verizon Wireless.  Sometimes you need to be able to forward ports to devices on your LAN and this is impossible to do when you’re behind a Verizon Wireless NAT. But, it is possible to create a port forward by using ssh to … Read more

King Cake

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We started a tradition last year where Eli and I make a Birthday King Cake on New Years day (which is also Eli’s Birthday).  We still had to call Kris a dozen times to help us interpret the recipe but I think we did a little better this year. Eli has gotten pretty good in the … Read more

FreeNAS vs. OmniOS / Napp-It

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       2015-01-07: I’ve updated this post to to reflect changes in FreeNAS 9.3.  I’ve been using OpenIndiana since late 2011 and switched to OmniOS in 2013.  Lately I started testing FreeNAS, what drove me to do this is I use  CrashPlan to backup my pool but recently Code 42 announced they’ll be discontinuing … Read more

Ben’s Banned Popcorn Recipe

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You May Die From Eating This Please read about how bad coconut oil is from the liberal CSPI organization (linked removed because it’s dead) and learn all about the danger of Coconut Oil from Michelle Obama (link removed because it’s dead) and the CDC (link removed because it’s dead) before proceeding. The secret to great popcorn is coconut oil … Read more

SSD ZFS ZIL SLOG Benchmarks – Intel DC S3700, Intel DC S3500, Seagate 600 Pro, Crucial MX100 Comparison

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I ran some performance tests comparing the Intel DC S3700, Intel DC S3500, Seagate 600 Pro, and Crucial MX100 when being used as a ZFS ZIL / SLOG Device.  All of these drives have a capacitor backed write cache so they can lose power in the middle of a write without losing data. Here are … Read more