HP Microserver ZFS BenchMark

[egrimisu]

Hi,

I have been running ZFS on Ubuntu for 4 years now and because of the lack of support i tend to migrate to FreeNas, here the community seems more, lets say, ZFS orientated.

The hardware:
HP Microserver N36L
16 GB RAM ECC
Between 3x to 5x 5TB Seagate Pro NAS (budget not ready)

The details:
I do not intend to use compression, L2Arc nor ZIL
HP Microserver is not a hell of a server so in case there are some known issues with BSD maybe I can use other SATA controller or NIC, recommendation are really appreciated.

The questions:
How to benchmark the ZFS array in order to make sure that the it's performance is adequate, what shall i aspect from this hardware, how to benchmark the disk separately and after the array in order to validate that all disks perform well.
The storage will be accessed by a OS X machine and by some windows machines. For the future I plan to use it as a storage for a ESXi host, so in this case NFS or iSCSi must be considered.

I have been testing FreeNAS v7 i think back in the days and something went wrong regarding performance, i can't tell what, a few years have passed since so this time since i have the time to correctly reflect I would like to make the right decision.

Thanks in advance.

 

[dlavigne]

Were you able to find the answers to your questions?

 

[egrimisu]

Were you able to find the answers to your questions?

No, not yet, still waiting.

 

[egrimisu]

The day when i need to decide to go or not go with Freenas is aproching, the deploiment day will be 17.12.2015 so i would like if possible to have some feedback, so thanks in advance!

 

[gpsguy]

FreeNAS 9.x will work as is, with your server, including it's SATA controller and NIC. The latter is a Broadcom and is decent.

Don't even think about using the hardware for iSCSI use. Typically, one would need at least 64GB of RAM. And, you'd want striped mirrors to go with that.
Since the case limits the number of drives you can stick in it and you've maxed out the RAM, it will be undersized for that task.

Since you to use the storage with both Mac and Windows clients, you'll want to use CIFS. One can clobber the data if you used CIFS for the Windows machines and AFP for the Macs. CIFS is single threaded, so that 1.3 GHz CPU won't perform like the modern 3.x GHz CPU's.

If you plan to put 5-6 drives on the existing controlller, you'd need to install a "hacked BIOS". The ODD bay and eSATA connection emulate IDE. To unlock them for AHCI, you'd need a non-HP BIOS. Search the 'net for more information.

Lastly, for benchmarking, search the forum for how-to's.

 

[egrimisu]

FreeNAS 9.x will work as is, with your server, including it's SATA controller and NIC. The latter is a Broadcom and is decent.

Don't even think about using the hardware for iSCSI use. Typically, one would need at least 64GB of RAM. And, you'd want striped mirrors to go with that.
Since the case limits the number of drives you can stick in it and you've maxed out the RAM, it will be undersized for that task.

Since you to use the storage with both Mac and Windows clients, you'll want to use CIFS. One can clobber the data if you used CIFS for the Windows machines and AFP for the Macs. CIFS is single threaded, so that 1.3 GHz CPU won't perform like the modern 3.x GHz CPU's.

If you plan to put 5-6 drives on the existing controlller, you'd need to install a "hacked BIOS". The ODD bay and eSATA connection emulate IDE. To unlock them for AHCI, you'd need a non-HP BIOS. Search the 'net for more information.

Lastly, for benchmarking, search the forum for how-to's.

Thanks for the answer. So no hardware changes are required if iSCSI is evited. I do know that cifs is single threaded and and will use cifs only for windows. Bios is allready hacked.

Thanks again!

 

[gpsguy]

How where you planning to use your disks? Striped mirrors? RAIDz2, ???

On the CIFS front, you'll probably want to use it for the Mac's too. I'm told that AFP has been depricated. But, I'm not an Apple fanboy. Just a lowly iDevice user.

 

[egrimisu]

Is it possible to use SMB instead CIFS for sharing folder to windows OS's? Not sore but i do know that there is some difference between the 2, and SMB v2 or v3 have some imporovements, not sure about compatibility with other OS'es

 

[gpsguy]

@anodos may be able to fill you in on differences between SMB versions.


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