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
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
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
Here’s my latest VMware + ZFS VSAN all in one server build based on a Supermicro platform… this is borrowing from the napp-it all-in-one concept where you pass the SAS/SATA controller to the ZFS VM using VT-d and then share a ZFS dataset back to VMware using NFS or iSCSI. For this particular server I’m … Read more
I ran some benchmarks comparing the Intel DC S3500 vs the Intel DC S3700 when being used as a SLOG/ZIL (ZFS Intent Log). Both SSDs are what Intel considers datacenter class and they are both very reasonably priced compared to some of the other enterprise class offerings. Update: 2014-09-14 — I’ve done newer benchmarks on … Read more
The other day I got a little frustrated with my Gen 8 Microserver, I was trying to upgrade ESXi to 5.5 but the virtual media feature kept disconnecting in the middle of the install due to not having an ILO4 license–I actually bought an ILO4 enterprise license but I have no idea where I put … Read more
Here’s a quick overview of installing the IBM ServerRaid M1015 HBA (aka LSI SAS9220-8i) in the HP Gen8 Microserver. These cards can be bought for around $100 on eBay. The HBA has two 6Gbps SAS ports (each port has 4 lanes, each lane is 6Gbps giving a theoretical maximum of 24Gbps per port and 48Gbps … Read more
I messed up my zpool with a stuck log device, and rather than try to fix it I decided to wipe out the zpool and restore the zfs datasets using CrashPlan. It took CrashPlan roughly a week to restore all my data (~1TB) which is making me consider local backups. All permissions intact. Dirty VM … Read more
I’m in the progress of switching my ZFS Server from OpenIndiana to OmniOS, mainly because OmniOS is designed only to be a server system so it’s a little cleaner, and they have a stable production release that’s commercially supported, and it has become Gea’s OS of choice for Napp-It. One of the last things I … Read more
Just saw on STH that the HP Microserver Gen8 specs have been released… Intel Pentium G2020T (2 core, 2.5Ghz, 3MB, 35W) OR Intel Celeron G1610T 2GB ECC memory (up to 16GB, 2 slots) One PCIe expansion slot. Dual gigabit ethernet ports (332i adapter) Dynamic Smart Array B120i/ZM 150w power supply HP iLO4 remote management port … Read more