ZFS with my Hardware

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cklahn

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Jul 10, 2011
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Hi,

the documentation says, it is recommended to have at least 4 GB of RAM an a 64-bit system.

I've an 32 bit 2,4 Ghz Pentium IV on an ASUS Mainboard with 1GB of RAM, but an 3Ware Hardware RAID-Controller with an RAID-1 configured.

Is this to slow for ZFS?

Greets
Christoph
 

ohnename

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I got it working with a similar config, only difference: no Hardware RAID and 2GB RAM
Try it out but don´t expect high performance (I got about 20MB/s CIFS)
 

cklahn

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Hi,

have you tried UFS volumes also?

Greets
Christoph
 

joeschmuck

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Odds are UFS will run better on your system than ZFS given your 1GB RAM limit.
 

cklahn

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Jul 10, 2011
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Hi joeschmuck,

I've ordered 2 more Gigs on memory, so I will try 3GB with 8.01-Beta 4 in a few days.

With the i386-version the "prefetch" of ZFS will be disabled. What do you think? Will ZFS work with 3GB more reasonable?

Greetings
Christoph
 

joeschmuck

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How many hard drives will you be running?

I'm not the ZFS expert, especially 32 bit as it's tricky and you are likely going to tweak some settings. There are some postings on these forums about tweaking 32 bit version of FreeNAS.

If you go with a mirror pair (2 drives) I think you will be fine but that's strictly a half-ass educated guess on my part. I feel if you are going to use 4 drives, you might be pushing it. Three drives is the minimum RAIDZ and you might get that. Post how many hard drives you desire to run and what kind of protection against hard drive failure you desire. As for prefetch, even mine is disabled at 4GB which does reduce read throughput for large blocks of data but I'm fine with what I have and I don't want that to introduce a problem into my system as well. Once we get closer to a final release product I might tweak the values.

Just to let you know, I have run a RAIDZ, Z1, Z2, mirrored pairs, and each drive as single ZFS drives on my system with 4GB RAM and have never touched the swap space. The maximum RAM I used was just over 3.2 GB so you might use the swap file if you plan to run 4 drives but with your controller card I have no idea if it will free up anything.

I'm sure someone will chime in that has experience with 32 bit FreeNAS and give you some friendly advice as well.
 
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