Is ZFS as frail as posts make it out to be?

[Ericloewe]

Maybe not after the Sun FE watches you pull the plug and voids your warranty :)

So... The Field Engineer's job is to, as convincingly as possible, void warranties?

 

[Bidule0hm]

/me was just trolling a bit :P

 

[jgreco]

So... The Field Engineer's job is to, as convincingly as possible, void warranties?

Well, yes, of course. The customers doing troublesome things are the same ones who have an increased likelihood to need warranty repairs, so the more quickly you can void a warranty for cause, the better it is for the hardware manufacturer.

 

[anodos]

Well, yes, of course. The customers doing troublesome things are the same ones who have an increased likelihood to need warranty repairs, so the more quickly you can void a warranty for cause, the better it is for the hardware manufacturer.

Sounds like the same business model as my insurance company.

 

[jgreco]

Sounds like the same business model as my insurance company.

Well, of course, a warranty is just a variation on insurance. ;-)

 

[Bhoot]

The problem comes in when the system is writing to a drive. ZFS holds the data in RAM and then writes in as large a continuous space as possible. Power goes off data goes up like a fart in a windstorm.

I had a test system up and running without any battery backup and it lost power a couple times and there was no major problem. The thing is that you never really know when it will be writing something important. Not to mention that just letting something get power off without being prepared for it is not a good idea in general when it comes to data integrity.

As far as power outages a simple battery backup can solve any issues, set it up and plug it in then make sure the monitor is setup correctly. Power goes off it goes on battery and then gracefully shuts down. No data loss no worry.

Is the auto shut down over power an inbuilt feature of freenas?

 

[nightshade00013]

Is the auto shut down over power an inbuilt feature of freenas?

If your talking about auto shutdown when the UPS goes on battery yes that is a built in feature. Go to the "services" icon, scroll down and you will see UPS as second from the bottom. Set it up with your device and turn it on. My backup is 1500va 900w and figuring that everything in the house will go off if the power goes out it should be basically at idle so I have it set to run for 5 mins on battery then power down. The backup shows it should be able to run it at an idle load for 40 mins but I figure if the power isn't up after five minutes it will be a while so may as well power down.

 

[Bhoot]

If your talking about auto shutdown when the UPS goes on battery yes that is a built in feature. Go to the "services" icon, scroll down and you will see UPS as second from the bottom. Set it up with your device and turn it on. My backup is 1500va 900w and figuring that everything in the house will go off if the power goes out it should be basically at idle so I have it set to run for 5 mins on battery then power down. The backup shows it should be able to run it at an idle load for 40 mins but I figure if the power isn't up after five minutes it will be a while so may as well power down.

Thank you. Good to know stuff.. Found it and now I am going to implement it. :)
Any way I could remotely start the UPS+Machine when the power is back up? I guess I am running into the fairy world but just incase the freenas machine is setup as a remote backup server a couple of 100 miles away would I need human intervention to power the machine on?

 

[nightshade00013]

To do it remotely you would need to have some way to turn it on with IPMI from what I am seeing.

Though beware some do seem to have a slightly nasty bug built in https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/ups-tip.18231/

May be better to rely on human intervention or make a little button pusher with a raspberry pi if your UPS falls into the category of shuts itself down. Then just activate it to turn the UPS on and have your FreeNAS MoBo set to always power up on power restoration.

 

[jgreco]

All server-oriented boards these days can be configured to auto-power-on after power loss. The big question is whether or not your UPS can sequence events properly to reliably reboot. If the NAS sees the power waning and shuts itself down, the UPS must dump the load and then re-energize it in order to restart the NASware. Some less expensive UPS's won't do this in certain circumstances, such as if utility power is restored right after the NAS begins powering down but before the UPS dumps the load. The higher end UPS units will coordinate this circumstance properly; once the NAS signals that it is going down, the processor on the UPS knows that the load MUST be dumped and that the UPS needs to restore power once a certain percentage of charge (or other appropriate condition) is available.

 

[rogerh]

Thank you. Good to know stuff.. Found it and now I am going to implement it. :)
Any way I could remotely start the UPS+Machine when the power is back up? I guess I am running into the fairy world but just incase the freenas machine is setup as a remote backup server a couple of 100 miles away would I need human intervention to power the machine on?

Some UPSs (including old APC Smart UPS, but I don't know about new ones) can be set to turn themselves off a defined time after shutdown of the server is initiated. And then turn themselves back on a certain time after power is restored. Thus restarting the server can be automated.