Like Drobo...

[Noobie]

Hey,
Been reading a bit around the site as well as about ZFS, confused myself a bit so just need some confirmation.

Basically, what I want to do is have 3 disks to start with and then add more as need be.
As I add more disks FN should use the extra disks (disks are in different sizes ranging from 250gb to 3tb), but if one disk fails I should not lose all my data.

1. From reading I think ZFS would handle the above, am I right or did I get that wrong?

2. My mobo goes a max of 4GB RAM, but I also have a Intel 60GB SSD that I dont mind using... so can I go till say... 12 TB with this setup?

Thanks!
Noob

 

[cyberjock]

Hey,
Been reading a bit around the site as well as about ZFS, confused myself a bit so just need some confirmation.

Basically, what I want to do is have 3 disks to start with and then add more as need be.
As I add more disks FN should use the extra disks (disks are in different sizes ranging from 250gb to 3tb), but if one disk fails I should not lose all my data.

1. From reading I think ZFS would handle the above, am I right or did I get that wrong?

2. My mobo goes a max of 4GB RAM, but I also have a Intel 60GB SSD that I dont mind using... so can I go till say... 12 TB with this setup?

Thanks!
Noob

Read my guide(link in my sig). You'll see that with ZFS you are best off building the server exactly how you want it all at once. Trying to piecemeal and slowly expand your zpool isn't efficient at all.

With just 4GB of RAM you shouldn't expect great performance. You really need 6GB before you can expect good performance regardless of size. Certain ZFS caching features are disabled if you don't have enough RAM. You'll see a message if you watch the bootup messages. Some people have had reliability problems with less than 6GB of RAM too. That's precisely why my guide says to use lots of RAM. I got tired of telling people to upgrade to fix their problems. :P

Read the manual. It'll really clear up alot of questions regarding hardware. In particular, the section for RAM. You almost certainly have 3.25GB of RAM usable for the OS.

 

[Noobie]

Thanks for replying!
Will go through your guide as i get home!

Problem is my mobo will only take a max 4gigs.