Alexandre Trevizoli
Dabbler
- Joined
- Jan 15, 2015
- Messages
- 25
Hi people. I already read a lot of posts in FreeNAS forums in more than 3 or 4 years that I'm here, I've already read a lot of documentation of ZFS, FreeNAS, Storages, but I never close my mainly doubt about what is a best way to build a private cloud environment using FreeNas(ZFS) and Windows Hyper-V or XenServer.
I want to sorry to my poor English, my main language is Portuguese(Brazil), but I really like to get this question resolved.
Maybe jgreco or others gods on ZFS could help us on it.
What I know:
1) Lots of ECC RAM
2) ZFS is COW, a lot of articles say it's not the best for block Storage
3) Use 10-25% of space
4) ISCSI is not the best to use with ZFS
5) RaidZ2 is not good for Block Storage
Ok...So if you will build a Cloud (with a lot of VMs) what should be used? Could someone explain best practices? Give some scenarios?
I did this way, but I don't think is correct way
I have 4 Servers Quad Processors 128GB RAM each, 2 SSD 120GB(Mirrored) for Windows (I'm using Windows 2012R2 on this scenario) Hyper-V
Storage FreeNas:1 Dual Processor 24 Bay, 64GB Ram, 12 x 4TB Hard Disk (2 VDEV RAIDZ2).
10Gbit Switch SFP+ and each server 10Gbit Card.
Following articles and posts, I shouldn't use RaidZ2, instead of this, Mirror should be a better option.
On this scenario we are small company, not rich, but want to do a good job. Mirror will lost 50% of total space correct? Maybe use mirror for OS and Programs and use RaidZ2 for VM Data? What we can do to have a good cost/benefit? Should use L2Arc and ZIL? Some articles say: instead to expend with L2Arc, spend with RAM.
How to deal with fragmentation? We know that it will occur right?
Like almost us is not rich, 10-25% of use of zpool space only is not a good option($$$)? Example: we have 4 x 4TB disks, so 16TB Total, but we did mirrored so we got 8TB to use 800MB to 2TB only will be very expensive. Have other option to not lost all this space? Should us not use ZFS? What FS big company like Amazon, Microsoft and others use?
So if we will use VMs which protocol should be used? CIFS, NFS or ISCSI or other?
We need good performance, because our VMs not can be slow, the expectation is they behave as if they were physical machines, so how build this environment to do it?
I know is a lot of question, but I just put they together, because we can find some answers in separate threads, never all together to build a sample scenario.
I want to thanks everyone on this forum, that help users like me and thank you FreeNAS developers to make it, to allow persons that can buy very expensive Storages(brands like EMC, DELL, HP, others) to build environments that was impossible without FreeNAS.
I want to sorry to my poor English, my main language is Portuguese(Brazil), but I really like to get this question resolved.
Maybe jgreco or others gods on ZFS could help us on it.
What I know:
1) Lots of ECC RAM
2) ZFS is COW, a lot of articles say it's not the best for block Storage
3) Use 10-25% of space
4) ISCSI is not the best to use with ZFS
5) RaidZ2 is not good for Block Storage
Ok...So if you will build a Cloud (with a lot of VMs) what should be used? Could someone explain best practices? Give some scenarios?
I did this way, but I don't think is correct way
I have 4 Servers Quad Processors 128GB RAM each, 2 SSD 120GB(Mirrored) for Windows (I'm using Windows 2012R2 on this scenario) Hyper-V
Storage FreeNas:1 Dual Processor 24 Bay, 64GB Ram, 12 x 4TB Hard Disk (2 VDEV RAIDZ2).
10Gbit Switch SFP+ and each server 10Gbit Card.
Following articles and posts, I shouldn't use RaidZ2, instead of this, Mirror should be a better option.
On this scenario we are small company, not rich, but want to do a good job. Mirror will lost 50% of total space correct? Maybe use mirror for OS and Programs and use RaidZ2 for VM Data? What we can do to have a good cost/benefit? Should use L2Arc and ZIL? Some articles say: instead to expend with L2Arc, spend with RAM.
How to deal with fragmentation? We know that it will occur right?
Like almost us is not rich, 10-25% of use of zpool space only is not a good option($$$)? Example: we have 4 x 4TB disks, so 16TB Total, but we did mirrored so we got 8TB to use 800MB to 2TB only will be very expensive. Have other option to not lost all this space? Should us not use ZFS? What FS big company like Amazon, Microsoft and others use?
So if we will use VMs which protocol should be used? CIFS, NFS or ISCSI or other?
We need good performance, because our VMs not can be slow, the expectation is they behave as if they were physical machines, so how build this environment to do it?
I know is a lot of question, but I just put they together, because we can find some answers in separate threads, never all together to build a sample scenario.
I want to thanks everyone on this forum, that help users like me and thank you FreeNAS developers to make it, to allow persons that can buy very expensive Storages(brands like EMC, DELL, HP, others) to build environments that was impossible without FreeNAS.
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