Maximum storage access for FreeNAS...

[NeuroPsyche]

I've been looking and looking around for the maximum limits for file storage.
We have several NetApp filers, running OnTap, and the expenses to keep these licenses current are killing us...
We dont' need tech support, don't need assistance... so I'm leaning towards a linux build much like OnTap... a
custom NAS/Filer build, without redundant fluff....

I'd be placing the FreeNAS on a flash card and running it from there. The storage shelves are just for that, storage.
I don't want to put the FreeNAS on the medium that is for our storage.

As to space... I need to find out somewhere where the limits of ZFS are. We have over 92tb of storage
across multiple shelves but currently handled by an R200 NetApp filer.

Greatly appreciate any help one could give!
Thanks!
Dave.

 

[bcrowder]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS

Capacity

ZFS is a 128-bit file system, so it can address 1.84 1019 times more data than 64-bit systems such as NTFS. The limitations of ZFS are designed to be so large that they would never be encountered. This was assured by surpassing physical rather than theoretical limitations—there simply is not enough usable matter on the planet Earth to support a maximized ZFS filesystem.[citation needed] Some theoretical limits in ZFS are:

248 — Number of entries in any individual directory[38]
16 exabytes (264 bytes) — Maximum size of a single file
16 exabytes — Maximum size of any attribute
256 zettabytes (278 bytes) — Maximum size of any zpool
256 — Number of attributes of a file (actually constrained to 248 for the number of files in a ZFS file system)
264 — Number of devices in any zpool
264 — Number of zpools in a system
264 — Number of file systems in a zpool

 

[Joshua Parker Ruehlig]

I'd also suggest the more storage you get the more ram you also supply. Usually 1GB ram is recommended per TB of data for zfs. They have motherboard that accept 18 ram slots, so your pretty much limited by hardware, not FreeNAS itself.