zfs discuss - Feb 2007 - Advice on a cheap home NAS machine using ZFS

Hi all,<br>
<br>
So I am new here (both using Solaris and also posting on this forum) and I
need<br> some advice.<br>
I have a plan on making a machine set up as a Network Storage Server and I
just<br> want some of your recommendations and opinions on how to go about
this.<br>
<br>
I do a lot of video editing of DV files and want to be able to store them on
a<br> network server. I was looking at a RAID 5 machine but the whole
concept of the<br> "write hole" failure kind of deterred me from
doing that.<br>
<br>
Then I discovered ZFS. This seems to fit my needs perfectly (with its
completely<br> redundant file system and ability to do snapshots for
pre/post edited DV<br> files).<br>
<br>
Now I haven''t actually installed Solaris or ZFS yet (actually I
haven''t even built<br> the machine) because I want to get some
advice from this community first.<br>
<br>
Similar to the post <a
href=http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=22147&tstart=15>
Cheap ZFS homeserver</a> I want to build the box to sit on <br>my
network serving files.<br>
<br>
Now I am strictly a Windows XP user. No other machines exist in my house. I
<br>have dual booted with Linux for a month or two so I have picked up a
few <br>Unix-Like experiences. However I have never installed Solaris or
used a standard<br> Unix OS.<br>
<br>
I am not new to PCs however I am new to this whole experience.<br>
<br>
What I want is a server that can have a "shared folder" so my XP can
see it.<br> Whether this be setting up a Samba share or using NFS I
don''t mind. I just want it<br> as an additional mapped drive
within XP. Of course this map drive will<br> consist of a ZFS pool. I am
still planning on running Solaris (maybe using VNC or<br> Telnet or a web
based shell to get into it via the network) to do the snapshots and<br>
administer it when needed.<br>
<br>
For the hardware I was looking at these specs (now these are all listed
in<br> Australian dollars. So please convert from US/whatever first before
you say "Why<br> don''t you get this part cheaper at XXX
dollars). Affordability is my main concern. <brI don''t want to spend
too much. The only thing I am looking at dropping real money<br> on is the
hard drives.<br>
<br>
[b]Mobo:  $99 - Gigabyte GA-M51GM-S2G[/b]  <br>(has 4 SATA2 ports and
onboard 1000 LAN and video)<br>
[b]CPU:     $79 - AMD AM2 Sempron 3000[/b]   <br>(moderate speed, cheap
price)<br>
[b]RAM:    $75 - 512MB Generic PC5300 DDR2[/b]<br>
[b]HDDs:<br>   4x 320GB SATA2 Seagate 16MB drive[/b]  <br>(to start
with. $139 each)<br>
[b]   1x 320GB IDE Western Digital 16MB drive[/b] <br>(I already have
this)<br>
[b]   1x 30GB IDE Maxtor[/b] <br>  (would be the system/swap/etc drive. I
already have this)<br>
[b]PSU:    $125 - Antec Neo Highly Efficient 2.2 430W[/b] <br>  (low power
= low noise)<br>
[b]Case:   I am actually planning on building my own out of pine wood.
<br>[/b](roughly $80 in materials/paint etc).<br>
<br>
I already have one of the 320GB IDEs, a 30GB IDE and a DVD RW
drive.<br>[b]All up these specs are going to cost me around $1000 for a
RAID-Z 5x 320GB <br>array (so that would be about 1.2TB
total).[/b]<br>
<br>
System and DVD RW would go on IDE channel 0 (master) and the 320GB IDE
<br>would go on IDE channel 1 (secondary) and be added to the
pool.<br>
<br>
With the ability to future expand with more HDDs with an additional PCIe SATA2
card<br> (when they exist).<br>
<br>
In essence I am looking for advice on how my plan will go. Will I be able to
run<br> Solaris (just as a fileserver. Doing nothing more with it) on
these specs? I am<br> going for cheap that is why I chose a fairly
ordinary CPU and Mobo.<br>
<br>
The motherboard is my prime choice as it has 4x SATA2 ports, Gigabit lan
and<br> onboard video (as it will be a network server the LAN is important
and the onboard<br> video keeps costs down by not needing to buy an
additional card).<br>
<br>
Will I be able to RAID-Z my 5 HDDs into 1 pool and then somehow share that
so<br> WinXP can see it? If so; what is the best/fastest way of doing
it?<br>
<br>
I want this to be fairly futureproof. I am backing up a lot of history of my
home<br> movies (roughly 500GB) that I want kept in uncompressed DV
format. I can add<br> bigger/more HDDs later on when the prices drop. Also
the ability to add more drives<br> to the pool also helps when I want to
store my Mp3 and movie collection on <br>there (initially it is just for
my home movies).<br>
<br>
Please post some opinions/responses to my plan. I am still in the initial
planning<br> stages so ANY information would be helpful.<br>
<br>
Thanks for taking the time to read my post.<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br>
Dave<br>
<br>
P.S. (Sorry for my poor formatting).
 
 
This message posted from opensolaris.org

Dave Sneddon wrote:
> For the hardware I was looking at these specs (now these are all listed in
> Australian dollars. So please convert from US/whatever first before you say
"Why
> don''t you get this part cheaper at XXX dollars). Affordability is
my main concern.
> I don''t want to spend too much. The only thing I am looking at
dropping real money
> on is the hard drives.
> Mobo:  $99 - Gigabyte GA-M51GM-S2G (has 4 SATA2 ports and onboard 1000 LAN
and video)
You might consider some of the mobos with 6 SATA ports, but in any case, the
chipset
is somewhat important.  There is pretty good support with Solaris for NVidia
NForce
series.
> CPU:     $79 - AMD AM2 Sempron 3000 (moderate speed, cheap price)
I''d recommend Athlon64, x2 if you can swing it.  You definitely want 64
bits and I''ve
lost track of which semprons are 64 bit.
> RAM:    $75 - 512MB Generic PC5300 DDR2
> HDDs:   4x 320GB SATA2 Seagate 16MB drive   (to start with. $139 each)
>    1x 320GB IDE Western Digital 16MB drive   (I already have this)
>    1x 30GB IDE Maxtor  (would be the system/swap/etc drive. I already have
this)
> PSU:    $125 - Antec Neo Highly Efficient 2.2 430W  (low power = low noise)
yeah, sounds reasonable... just make sure you have plenty of air flow. That
many disks can get warm and heat kills disks. It might be a good idea to buy
an extra fan for the case.
> Case:   I am actually planning on building my own out of pine wood. 
>         (roughly $80 in  materials/paint etc).
Sweet. I''d probably go for quarter-sawn oak with a (homebrew) dye
I''ve been using
lately.  But oak is perhaps more plentiful here.  I''ve got a yard full
of eucalyptus,
but as you know, that is too fragile to work easily.  OTOH, I scored a bunch of
rough-sawn cherry that''s aching for a project... the problem is that
everytime I
go down that path, I get reminded that a case with power supply runs about $30
down
at the local swap meet, $5 if you don''t mind scrap.

BTW, plan on using some sort of ZFS redundancy.  I prefer mirrors, others prefer
more GBytes/$ and use raidz. You make make other trade-offs, but do something to
protect your data.
  -- richard

Richard Elling wrote:<br>
> You might consider some of the mobos with 6 SATA ports, but in any
case,<br>
> the chipset is somewhat important. There is pretty good support
with<br>
> Solaris for NVidia NForce series.<br>
<br>
I had a look for some 6x SATA(2) boards. However they generally have
more<br> things attached to them (ie SLI and all the other stuff i
don''t want/need).<br>
I was just looking for somethign cheap and simple. This board seems to
fit<br>
the bill as it has 4x SATA2 and onboard gigabit LAN and video (one of the
few<br>
rare boards that actually has everything I want in it).<br>
<br>
> I''d recommend Athlon64, x2 if you can swing it. You definitely
want 64 bits <br>
> and I''ve lost track of which semprons are 64 bit.<br>
<br>
I''m pretty sure that this Semperon is 64bit. As I want to keep the cost
down<br>
I don''t really want to go for anything higher. I might consider a low
end<br>
Athlon 64. Like an AMD Athlon? 64 AM2 3500+ Processor Retail (AM2)<br>
which comes in at AU$126. Its a fair bit more expensive than the<br>
Semperon though.<br>
<br>
> yeah, sounds reasonable... just make sure you have plenty of air flow.
That<br>
> many disks can get warm and heat kills disks. It might be a good idea to
buy<br>
> an extra fan for the case.<br>
<br>
This will be the hardest part. It will actually take me months to work out
a<br>
design I am happy with. I''m thinking of putting the mobo on top
horizontally<br>
with the drives side-by-side underneath it (for 6 drives that would be 3
layers).<br>
Then I will stick a dirty big 20cm fan blowing over all of them. I might not
even<br>
put sides on the case. Just thinking Pine as it is cheap. Would like some
nice<br>
cedar or redwood but that would cost a lot and I don''t have the best
tools to<br>
make it with.<br>
<br>
> BTW, plan on using some sort of ZFS redundancy. I prefer mirrors,
others<br>
> prefer more GBytes/$ and use raidz. You make make other trade-offs,
but<br>
> do something to protect your data.<br>
<br>
Well I was hoping RAIDZ would be able to surfice. Reading about it seems
to<br>
have what I need. I know that RAID-5 is fairly redundant (however not
totally)<br>
and it could get to be hard to backup 750GB of data every so often (where
do<br>
you even put that amount of data?). I wish DVDs were larger :)<br>
<br>
I think regular snapshots (before I undertake an editing project) would be
enough.<br>I like that if a drive dies or I want to add a new one in
it<br>
can be fixed/done in a few keystrokes (as far as what I have read
about<br>
RAIDZ tells me).<br>
<br>
Can anyone shed any light on whether the actual software side of this
can<br>
be achieved? Can I share my entire ZFS pool as a "folder" or
"network drive"<br>
so WinXP can read it? Will this be fast enough to read/write to at DV
speeds<br>
(25mbit/s)? Once the pool is set up and I have it shared within XP (assuming
it<br>
can be done) can I then easily copy files to/from it?<br>
<br>
I don''t mind if I have to use something like FTP but ultimately it
appearing as<br>
a drive in XP is my final goal. If this can''t be done then I
don''t believe I will<br>
even attempt to install/create this server.<br>
<br>
Thaks for your answers and advice Richard. It has given me lots to think
about.<br>
<br>
Dave.
 
 
This message posted from opensolaris.org

I''ve asked before, but I don''t think anyone answered.

Do you know of any eSATA based methods of using ZFS right now? My hope
was to pick up some one or two 4-port eSATA cards that have port
multiplier support, (enabling 5 drives per port, or 20 drives per
card) - but it does not look like Solaris has much support for that.
Possibly an Addonics adapter but the details look sketchy as to any of
the specifics. It is either that or possibly some iSCSI or AoE setup;
I am trying to allow for the storage pool to grow without modifying
the host/controller machine if you will. I suppose USB could be an
option as well, but it seems to be flaky and can use a lot of CPU from
what I''ve seen. But USB would allow for near-infinite expansion. I
suppose something like this, but in USB flavor:
http://fwdepot.com/thestore/default.php/cPath/1_88
(I can''t seem to find the USB ones real quick but I am sure I have
seen them) - or could Firewire be well supported and "mature" enough
in OpenSolaris for ZFS?

Anyway - do you have any thoughts on any of this? My plans would be to
export it using Samba for the Windows machines on the network. Maybe
NFS if I have additional *nix based machines.

Thanks in advance! When I saw ZFS and the upcoming crypto support
planned, it truly would meet all my needs. I have been telling all my
friends about ZFS, we''re all excited but none of us have had a use or
equipment that we could use for it yet.

- mike

On 2/5/07, Richard Elling <Richard.Elling at sun.com> wrote:
...

Dave Sneddon wrote:
> Can anyone shed any light on whether the actual software side of this
can<br>
> be achieved? Can I share my entire ZFS pool as a "folder" or
"network drive"<br>
> so WinXP can read it? Will this be fast enough to read/write to at DV
speeds<br>
> (25mbit/s)? Once the pool is set up and I have it shared within XP
(assuming it<br>
> can be done) can I then easily copy files to/from it?
I''ve used Samba to share a Unix filesystem with Windows clients many 
times, and would recommend it for this project:
    http://www.samba.org
It runs as a regular program on the Unix side, and does a very 
appropriate job of translating Unix filesystem semantics into Windows 
filesystem semantics.

There are a few things that translate oddly -- Unix symlinks appear to 
be the real file on the Windows side, so one could really confuse a 
Windows user who isn''t aware that they exist.  Fortunately, most people
who use symlinks know what they are, so I never had a problem with 
symlinks when I was running a 400-user NFS/Samba server (in my previous 
job).  Also, traditional Unix permissions look funny if you try to 
adjust the permissions from a Windows workstation.  And, lastly, 
usernames and passwords are hashed differently on Unix then they are on 
Windows, so you have to run smbpasswd on the Unix server before a 
particular user can access their files on the Unix server via Samba -- 
unless you configure Samba to play along with an existing Windows Domain 
or AD.

All in all, Samba provides a nice bridge -- and I''ve found it to be 
worlds better than the Windows-based NFS clients, and more secure as well.
> I don''t mind if I have to use something like FTP but ultimately it
appearing as<br>
> a drive in XP is my final goal. If this can''t be done then I
don''t believe I will<br>
> even attempt to install/create this server.
Windows XP with the newer Office installations has a "web folders" 
facility, that kind-of-almost mounts an FTP server.  It doesn''t show up
as a drive-letter, but it does appear in My Computer.

It''s not uncommon to run Samba, SSH/SFTP,  and FTP servers on the same 
host -- though there is  quite a lot to to be said for avoiding 
protocols such as plain old FTP where the login is sent across the 
network in plaintext.


I hope this helps,
-Luke
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I get around 100Mbits per second sustained on big files transferring to/from my
Solaris/zfs box and Vista over samba. That is over gigabit ethernet through one
switch and one router. I personally think it should be faster, but is probably
just due to my network hardware and not samba or zfs since none of my systems
seem to be IO or CPU bound.

In other words, I doubt you will have any problems hitting 25Mbits.
 
 
This message posted from opensolaris.org

Luke Scharf wrote:
> Dave Sneddon wrote:
>> Can anyone shed any light on whether the actual software side of this
can<br>
>> be achieved? Can I share my entire ZFS pool as a "folder" or
"network drive"<br>
>> so WinXP can read it? Will this be fast enough to read/write to at DV
speeds<br>
>> (25mbit/s)? Once the pool is set up and I have it shared within XP
(assuming it<br>
>> can be done) can I then easily copy files to/from it?
> 
> I''ve used Samba to share a Unix filesystem with Windows clients
many
> times, and would recommend it for this project:
>    http://www.samba.org
> It runs as a regular program on the Unix side, and does a very 
> appropriate job of translating Unix filesystem semantics into Windows 
> filesystem semantics.
It should be installed by default, for NV at least, though the source
won''t be
installed by default.  I''d recommend SXDE (aka NV build 55b)
	http://developers.sun.com/solaris/downloads/solexpdev/

You can manage the shares with the GUI:
	Launch -> Administration -> Shared Folders

Use "SMB" for windows clients.  Or, for the CLI folks,
	man samba

At present ZFS doesn''t know how to do this via the "zfs"
command, but
IMHO that would make a nice RFE.  Thoughts?
  -- richard