[zfs-discuss] ZFS: First use recommendations

Akhilesh Mritunjai
Sat, 13 Sep 2008 20:11:09 -0000

Hi,

My setup is arguably smaller than yours, so YMMV:

Key Point: I have found that using infrastructure provided natively by
Solaris/ZFS are the best choices.

I have been using CIFS... it''s unpredictable when some random windows
machines would stop seeing them. XP/Server 2003/Vista - Too many things go
wrong. So here is what I do:

1. I use xVM VirtualBox for Windows

2. Snapshot/Clones are managed by ZFS... Just put the vmdk on its own FS and let
zfs handle all sorts of shiny stuff. In your case same thing can be done with
ZFS Volumes, if you choose to go with iSCSI.

3. There is a reason whole industry relies on NFS (learned the hard way). In
short - it works! I have just installed SFU on all windows clients and
couldn''t be happier. No matter what happens to server or network
(unplugging the wrong cable or router rebooting) , the clients *always* behave
predictably. When the server/network goes up, it all again starts working. I do
*all* shares through NFS now - windows, Linux and Solaris. Easy to setup *and*
predictable!

In short, for minimum fuss, stick with letting the bottom most layer which makes
sense manage stuff... and in any case, don''t let the virtualization
products manage the storage in _any_ way. ZFS does it best and let it do it...
and stick with NFS for sharing. SFU NFS client/server are small and they work
really well, and they come bundled with Windows Server 200x.

For 8 drives, go to raidz2. Two drives going bad is easy in an 8 drive setup.
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