Hi listmembers, I am about to migrate our mailservices to FreeBSD + ZFS. Thus, before entering the sheer endless? stage of performance testing, I thought I would ask here kindly for all kinds of information. My setups are nothing special with few users, however, I would like to have a nice setup, maybe some of you could contribute to this thread. We are using slow spinning disks, but we may consider using ssds in a not-so-distant future. *) storages: any infos on ZFS options or whether to use mdbox or sdbox, and what configs/options regarding compression etc. *) backup: what is a best practice regarding backups? - using only the dovecot tools or leveraging the great features of ZFS (or both) with snapshots etc.? Thanks for all sorts of infos, probably saving me quite some time evaluating different options! Robert
On Sun, Nov 14, 2021 at 03:14:44PM +0100, infoomatic wrote:> I am about to migrate our mailservices to FreeBSD + ZFS. Thus, before > entering the sheer endless? stage of performance testing, I thought I > would ask here kindly for all kinds of information. > > [..] > > *) storages: any infos on ZFS options [..]In addition to FreeBSD's excellent handbook, plus of course man-pages, you may find the following helpful: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/05/zfs-101-understanding-zfs-storage-and-performance/ and https://jrs-s.net/category/open-source/zfs/ especially https://jrs-s.net/2015/02/06/zfs-you-should-use-mirror-vdevs-not-raidz/ -- A: When it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: When is top-posting a bad thing? () ASCII ribbon campaign. Please avoid HTML emails & proprietary /\ file formats. (Why? See e.g. https://v.gd/jrmGbS ). Thank you.
> Op 14 nov. 2021 om 15:15 heeft infoomatic <infoomatic at gmx.at> het volgende geschreven: > > ?Hi listmembers, > > I am about to migrate our mailservices to FreeBSD + ZFS. Thus, before > entering the sheer endless stage of performance testing, I thought I > would ask here kindly for all kinds of information. > > My setups are nothing special with few users, however, I would like to > have a nice setup, maybe some of you could contribute to this thread. We > are using slow spinning disks, but we may consider using ssds in a > not-so-distant futureIf performance is a concern, why not now?> > *) storages: any infos on ZFS options or whether to use mdbox or sdbox, > and what configs/options regarding compression etc. > > *) backup: what is a best practice regarding backups? - using only the > dovecot tools or leveraging the great features of ZFS (or both) with > snapshots etc.? > > Thanks for all sorts of infos, probably saving me quite some time > evaluating different options! > > Robert > >
On 14/11/2021 14:14, infoomatic wrote:> My setups are nothing special with few users, however, I would like to > have a nice setup, maybe some of you could contribute to this thread. We > are using slow spinning disks, but we may consider using ssds in a > not-so-distant future. > > *) storages: any infos on ZFS options or whether to use mdbox or sdbox, > and what configs/options regarding compression etc.OmniOS with ZFS here. I use maildir - just a personal choice and inertia, I have no performance data, no problem and no reason to change. I like being able to see emails as plain files. zfs set compress=gzip and no other changes from default, oh and atime=off on the whole machine. Email gzips well, most other ZFSes I leave on lz4. I say it is better to use the file system to compress rather than getting dovecot to do it. $ zfs get compress,compressratio,used ... NAME PROPERTY VALUE SOURCE ...../..../vmail compression gzip received ...../..../vmail compressratio 1.82x - ...../..../vmail used 8.55G - 25 mailbox users ("nothing special with few users"). I moved the storage from HDD (mirror plus log) to SSD (mirror) and no one noticed, not even me knowing it had been done and over a local network. I have enough RAM such that repeated reads are cached. I will use native ZFS encryption soon. I see no performance issues in test. Don't get hung up on ZFS tuning, mostly ZFS just works.> *) backup: what is a best practice regarding backups? - using only the > dovecot tools or leveraging the great features of ZFS (or both) with > snapshots etc.?I use automated snapshots and zfs send/receive to a remote backup machine. I auto copy many ZFSes this way so it is minimal effort to do email too. James