ZFS Server plan and questions

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LIGISTX

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Don't worry, you'll easily saturate a gigabit link, if you don't then there's something really wrong ;)

If compression is enabled (and it is by default) then the number of drives doesn't matter for performance.


Hmm. Would my plan of using a 3.1 ghz Pentium have enough power for compression...?


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Bidule0hm

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Yes, for LZ4 at least. For reference with the setup of my sig I barely hit 10% of loading on the CPU during a transfer.
 

LIGISTX

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Yes, for LZ4 at least. For reference with the setup of my sig I barely hit 10% of loading on the CPU during a transfer.

What is ZL4? I am new to freenas and ZFS, still learning lingo.


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SweetAndLow

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Lz4 is a type of compression and default on freenas
 

SweetAndLow

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Lz4 is a type of compression and default on freenas
 

Bidule0hm

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It's a compression algorithm (like gzip for example) and it's the default. It's great because when the data is already compressed then it doesn't lose CPU cycles trying to recompress it so the overhead is really low. That's why it's a good idea to enabled it (and why it is by default) even if you're not sure if your data will be compressible (unless you're 100% sure your data is not compressible of course) ;)
 
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LIGISTX

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Thanks for the info guys!

Also, to be clear, not just reads will saturate gigabit, writes will as well correct? I assume they definitely will, my RAID Z2 under openmediavault which isn't ZFS will saturate gigabit in both directions, and if I understand correctly ZFS should be faster, assuming you have enough RAM.
 

Bidule0hm

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Yes, no problem at all ;)
 

LIGISTX

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So I have read of a few people losing data because of not meeting the minimum amount of RAM (8 gigs). I full well plan to start the build with 16 gigs of RAM, and yes, FOR SURE ECC...

My question is, I may end up going with 9x4 TB thus 28 TB of usable space, 36 TB of full hhd space. Is there any data risk to running "only" 16 gigs of RAM. I am assuming because my workload is very low, performance should be ok. But assuming performance is at least acceptable (in which case I may upgrade ram latter), there is at least no data integrity issue with this correct? As long as you are not grossly under the 1TB-1GB rule, there isn't any data loss issue correct? Or is there only data integrity issue if you are under 8 gigs of RAM?

I guess a better way to phrase this, if you run less than 8 gigs of RAM you can run into data integrity issues, but could you run a VERY large ZFS pool (say 50+TB) with say 16 gigs of ram, have crappy performance, but not have data integrity issues?
 

Bidule0hm

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Yes, all you risk poor performance but no data integrity issues ;)
 

LIGISTX

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Hey guys. Buddy of mine just reminded me of something that I hadn't even thought of, and I am very interested.

I forget the name of the OS that it is, but I know there is a Linux based OS for running a router on a pc, very powerful, and has some really cool features.

Has anyone either ran that in VM of freenas, or somehow installed it side by side? Like I said I am new to Linux, so I don't really know how feasible such a setup would be, or if running a router in a VM would end up hurting performance on my network more than help it. I just figured if I have a 24/7 basically server running, why not use it for multiple things! Would be pretty cool. Have always thought of running a PC powered router!


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danb35

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I forget the name of the OS that it is, but I know there is a Linux based OS for running a router on a pc, very powerful, and has some really cool features.
There are many such Linux distributions (I use SME Server 9.0, and have been for the last 15 years in varying versions--it combines the router/firewall with a public-facing LAMP and mail server, as well as file-sharing and LDAP for the LAN), and pfSense is a popular BSD-based router/firewall. I wouldn't recommend installing any of them as a VM or jail on a FreeNAS box, though. I do have a couple of servers running as VMs under FreeNAS, and a number of jails, but that's an application I would (and do) save for its own hardware. The good news is that the hardware requirements can be very modest, depending on the particular software you're looking at.
 

LIGISTX

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There are many such Linux distributions (I use SME Server 9.0, and have been for the last 15 years in varying versions--it combines the router/firewall with a public-facing LAMP and mail server, as well as file-sharing and LDAP for the LAN), and pfSense is a popular BSD-based router/firewall. I wouldn't recommend installing any of them as a VM or jail on a FreeNAS box, though. I do have a couple of servers running as VMs under FreeNAS, and a number of jails, but that's an application I would (and do) save for its own hardware. The good news is that the hardware requirements can be very modest, depending on the particular software you're looking at.

Pfsense is the one I have heard of, and I do have an old core 2 duo rig I could dedicate to the task. Hmm. Ok. Good to know its not advised to run in a VM or jail.

Thanks.


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