Hi everybody, I want to use a setup of nfsv3,krb5i mountpoints for my users' homefolders. The clients are linux (Ubuntu) and the server is FreeBSD-8-STABLE. The clients use autofs for mounting the users' homefolders. Once a user logs in, their folder is mounted, and the user has access to their homefolder via nfs. When I run ls(1), the system sometimes "stalls" before it responds. At the moment I am in the pilot phase, so there is no load on the server or client to cause this stall, since I am the only user using this setup. The delay in this ls(1) command is present even if I mount the homefolder without the use of kerberos. Hence, I started reading about NFS tuning both for linux and FreeBSD. What I found in a few resources regarding linux, was to enable async mounts on the client if I was willing to take the risk of compromising data integrity. I've tried mounting the share with the async option set, just for the sake of experimentation, but with no luck (mount(8) doesn't show 'async' among the mount options). I didn't look into it more deeply, so I moved on. As far as my next tuning candidate is concerned -the server- the shares are stored on a ufs partition of an esxi FreeBSD-image, for the moment. Once my proof-of-concept period is completed, the setup will be migrated to a real system and the homefolders are meant to be stored on a ZFS zraid partition. The server uses a 6-disk raid on an IBM 8k raid controller with memory and battery backup. I will create a 15GB volume (raid6) for the root filesystem, and will "export" the remaining space of each disk as a separate, equal-size volume. This way, I will be able to create the ZFS raid over these 6 volumes and then I will export the filesystem using NFS. From what I've read so far, both on this list and on http://wiki.freebsd.org/ZFSTuningGuide, it is stated that if ZIL is disabled or put on a SSD separate disk, NFS over ZFS performance is enhanced. On some mails of this list, specifically those with the subject ""zfs, nfs and zil" started by Claus Guttesen, it is mentioned that ZIL 'may' be disabled if the underlying system uses an analogous data integrity mechanism. So, after all this intro, here are my two simple questions: 1) If I enable this mechanism on my controller, will my filesystem be safe in a case of power outage? 2) Is there a good, up-to-date guide for NFS performance for FreeBSD? Thank you all for your time in advance, mamalos -- George Mamalakis IT Officer Electrical and Computer Engineer (Aristotle Un. of Thessaloniki), MSc (Imperial College of London) Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty of Engineering Aristotle University of Thessaloniki phone number : +30 (2310) 994379