i want to move to a freenas setup to secure my data, and zfs seems to be the best solution. while i wait for hard drives to come back down in price, i have been playing with a test rig that is spec'ed out as follows:
ibm thinkcentre with p4(3.0ghz)
4gb ram (1gb is used by the system and 3gb is aviable to freenas) (pc2-4500)
i beleive its a gigabyte board, and does have pci-e slots, this is the same board: http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-THINKCENTRE-41X0436-73P0780-SOCKET-775-MOTHERBOARD-/270759028263
onboard gigabit port, sata-300 controller
200gb seagate sata drive
freenas 8.0.2
ultimately i will be using the same computer, just a new pair of hard drive (2tb each) in a mirrored configuration.
my two questions are:
1. most of the trnasfers would be with one computer, my switch, although gigabit, does not support lacp. can i have a dedicated network run between the freenas computer and my windows machine and use that to mount the share (wiht a crossover cable), then have all the other computers and the web interface on a seperate network interface trhough my switch? the objective would be to avoid bottlenecks causes by high bandwidth over the general network by other users. to clarify, i would use two nics, one would be a dedicated share to one computer, and the other would be shares to all other users and the web interface.
2. my zfs is slow (and i have searched!). i understand that im using a less than optimal system, and i have tried the standard suggestions for tweaking in loader.conf, and have tried freenas .7 as well with no improvment. my read speeds over the network are 4x faster with ufs, and write speeds are 2x faster. using dd locally, the speeds are respectable. iperf shows full gigabit speeds. i suspect that my pci-e bus is probably slowing me down when i combine zfs and the network as either on their own are fine, its only when i use them together i have serious speed issues. any suggestions (other than a new computer, or more ram) to fix this? would moving either the sata or the network to a pcie card help the problem? from what i can find, the pci-e on the board is only 1.x spec.
thanks
ibm thinkcentre with p4(3.0ghz)
4gb ram (1gb is used by the system and 3gb is aviable to freenas) (pc2-4500)
i beleive its a gigabyte board, and does have pci-e slots, this is the same board: http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-THINKCENTRE-41X0436-73P0780-SOCKET-775-MOTHERBOARD-/270759028263
onboard gigabit port, sata-300 controller
200gb seagate sata drive
freenas 8.0.2
ultimately i will be using the same computer, just a new pair of hard drive (2tb each) in a mirrored configuration.
my two questions are:
1. most of the trnasfers would be with one computer, my switch, although gigabit, does not support lacp. can i have a dedicated network run between the freenas computer and my windows machine and use that to mount the share (wiht a crossover cable), then have all the other computers and the web interface on a seperate network interface trhough my switch? the objective would be to avoid bottlenecks causes by high bandwidth over the general network by other users. to clarify, i would use two nics, one would be a dedicated share to one computer, and the other would be shares to all other users and the web interface.
2. my zfs is slow (and i have searched!). i understand that im using a less than optimal system, and i have tried the standard suggestions for tweaking in loader.conf, and have tried freenas .7 as well with no improvment. my read speeds over the network are 4x faster with ufs, and write speeds are 2x faster. using dd locally, the speeds are respectable. iperf shows full gigabit speeds. i suspect that my pci-e bus is probably slowing me down when i combine zfs and the network as either on their own are fine, its only when i use them together i have serious speed issues. any suggestions (other than a new computer, or more ram) to fix this? would moving either the sata or the network to a pcie card help the problem? from what i can find, the pci-e on the board is only 1.x spec.
thanks