I''m looking to buy some new hardware to build a home ZFS based NAS. I know ZFS can be quite CPU/mem hungry and I''d appreciate some opinions on the following combination: Intel Essential Series D945GCLF2 Kingston ValueRAM DIMM 2GB PC2-5300U CL5 (DDR2-667) (KVR667D2N5/2G) Firstly, does it sound like a reasonable combination to run OpenSolaris? Will Solaris make use of both processors? / all cores? Is it going to be enough power to run ZFS? I read that ZFS prefers 64bit, but it''s not clear to me if the above board will provide 64bit support. Also I already have 2 SATA II disks to throw in (using both onboard SATA II ports), but ideally I would like to add a OS suitable PCI SATA card to add maybe another 4 disks. Any suggestions on a suitable card please? Cheers Peter -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
I''m running ZFS on nevada (b94 and b98) on two machines at home, both with 4 gig ram. one has a quad core intel core2 w/ ECC ram, the other has normal RAM and an athlon 64 dual-core low power. both seem to be working great. On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 2:04 PM, Peter Bridge <peter_bridge at hotmail.com> wrote:> I''m looking to buy some new hardware to build a home ZFS based NAS. I know ZFS can be quite CPU/mem hungry and I''d appreciate some opinions on the following combination: > > Intel Essential Series D945GCLF2 > Kingston ValueRAM DIMM 2GB PC2-5300U CL5 (DDR2-667) (KVR667D2N5/2G) > > Firstly, does it sound like a reasonable combination to run OpenSolaris? > > Will Solaris make use of both processors? / all cores? > > Is it going to be enough power to run ZFS? > > I read that ZFS prefers 64bit, but it''s not clear to me if the above board will provide 64bit support. > > Also I already have 2 SATA II disks to throw in (using both onboard SATA II ports), but ideally I would like to add a OS suitable PCI SATA card to add maybe another 4 disks. Any suggestions on a suitable card please? > > Cheers > Peter > -- > This message posted from opensolaris.org > _______________________________________________ > zfs-discuss mailing list > zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >
It depends on what your doing. I got a AMD Sempron Processor LE-1100 (1.9Ghz) doing NAS for mythtv and seems to do ok. If the board you quote is what your getting I think it is 64bit chip - intel site says its a Atom 330. Solaris will should use all its cores/threads - intel have added a load of code to opensolaris not sure if Atom stuff was in it. Think your out of luck for PCI SATA cards - not seen anything good about it. Sil hardware is buggy, but its got the driver support. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
I''ve been looking at this board myself for the same thing.... The blog below is regarding the D945GCLF but looking at the two, it looks like the processor is the only thing that is different (single core vs. dual core). http://blogs.sun.com/PotstickerGuru/entry/solaris_running_on_intel_atom -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
thanks for all the feedback. Some followup questions: If OS will see all 4 cores, will it also make use of all 4 cores for ZFS. ie is ZFS fully multi threaded? Is there any point to run ZFS over just two 2 disks? without the extra sata ports I''m thinking I may have to abandon this idea. The plan was to use the internal ide just for a small boot disk and cdrom. I don''t think it would be a good idea to mix ide and sata zfs, agreed? We''ll I''ll do some more searching, maybe there is another quad core board out there with 8 sata ports, 4GB ram support and passive cooled north bridge :) -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
Peter Bridge wrote:> thanks for all the feedback. Some followup questions: > > If OS will see all 4 cores, will it also make use of all 4 cores for ZFS. ie is ZFS fully multi threaded?Very much multithreaded just like the rest of the Solaris kernel. -- Darren J Moffat
oops, I mean 2 cores. Anyway I''m having second thoughts about this board now because the northbridge sounds like a power hog and I was planning a passive cooled system. Also I went through the hardware compatability list and can see what was mentioned about the lack of SATA card for PCI. So back to the drawing board. So any tips on a passivly cooled MB with 4-6 SATA II ports that runs well with OS? -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
Nvidia 5 series for amd - got good support for the chipset Intel boards - as ICH9 drivers are in -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
On Thu, 23 Oct 2008, Peter Bridge wrote:> thanks for all the feedback. Some followup questions: > > If OS will see all 4 cores, will it also make use of all 4 cores for > ZFS. ie is ZFS fully multi threaded?I am not sure about the ZFS compression code but from what I can see ZFS is multi-threaded like the rest of Solaris. If it was not multi-threaded then it would suck, and lots of Sun hardware would not succeed in the market.> We''ll I''ll do some more searching, maybe there is another quad core > board out there with 8 sata ports, 4GB ram support and passive > cooled north bridge :)On modern hardware, ZFS is not normally CPU limited (unless you enable compression or exotic checksums). There is not really a need for lots of CPU cores. AMD Athelon/Opteron dual core likely matches or exceeds Intel quad core for ZFS use due to a less bottlenecked memory channel. These should be your priorities for NAS: * 64 bit CPU * ECC memory support * Lots of memory (>4GB if possible) * Enough SATA/SAS ports to satisfy storage reqirements. Bob =====================================Bob Friesenhahn bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/ GraphicsMagick Maintainer, http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/
On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 4:04 PM, Peter Bridge <peter_bridge at hotmail.com> wrote:> I''m looking to buy some new hardware to build a home ZFS based NAS. I know ZFS can be quite CPU/mem hungry and I''d appreciate some opinions on the following combination: > > Intel Essential Series D945GCLF2 > Kingston ValueRAM DIMM 2GB PC2-5300U CL5 (DDR2-667) (KVR667D2N5/2G) > > Firstly, does it sound like a reasonable combination to run OpenSolaris? > > Will Solaris make use of both processors? / all cores? > > Is it going to be enough power to run ZFS? > > I read that ZFS prefers 64bit, but it''s not clear to me if the above board will provide 64bit support. > > Also I already have 2 SATA II disks to throw in (using both onboard SATA II ports), but ideally I would like to add a OS suitable PCI SATA card to add maybe another 4 disks. Any suggestions on a suitable card please? >------ quoting myself in another (possibly off-topic post) ------- I''ve tested OpenSolaris build 98, Belenix 0.7.1 and os20080501 on the Intel D945GCLF2 Dual Core 1.6GHz Atom Mini-ITX Board. Note the "2" at the end of the part number - this indicates the dual-core Atom CPU. All run fine and this board supports a single 2Gb DIMM. It''s a little slow if you''re building a desktop box, but fine if you''re just doing lightweight browsing, word processing etc. Note that the board chipset consumes more power than the Atom CPU. A typical system based on this board will consume around 55 Watts. The other good news - this board costs about $80 (including the soldered in CPU). Just add a 2Gb DIMM and an IDE drive and you''re up and running! ------ end of quote - save time typing! ------ This is a great board - but a step backwards in terms of total CPU horsepower, max memory size and expansion capability. It''s 32-bit. Would I recommend it for ZFS - no. Is it future proof - no. You have not described your requirements (low-power ??, low-cost ??). But I''ll contribute some pointers anyway! :) See this article entitled: G31 And E7200: The Real Low-Power Story October 10, 2008 ? 1:50 AM ? Motherboards at: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-e7200-g31,2039.html The E7200 dual-core (2.53GHz with 3Mb of cache) is a "sleeper" product IMHO. Low power (well below the published 65W power envelope), plenty of grunt and priced to go. Couple this chip on a system with 4 or 8Gb of RAM and you have a winner. For example, consider the "mid tier" system here: http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/15737/5 (the motherboard is $126) with an e7200 CPU and 2 memory kits from here: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=KVR800D2K2%2F4GR&x=0&y=0 Also, take a look at: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010170147%201052108080%201052420643%201052315794%201052516065&name=5 - look at the pricing *after* rebates and you''re looking at brand-name memory (2 * 2Gb = 4Gb total) for $65 here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227298 With ZFS - the most important hardware component is RAM. Get as much RAM as your motherboard will support (along with any budgetary constraints). My advice is the E7200 CPU, 8Gb of RAM and you''ll have a smile on your face every time you use this system. If you want a small system that is pre-built, look at every possible permutation/combination of the Dell Vostro 200 box. Yes - I just put together a system based on this box and made a few "modifications" - like replacing the PSU with a Corsair VX450W, added 4 * 1Gb of RAM and an ATI Radeon 4850 (BTW Nvidia is much better supported under OpenSolaris). This system was built as a cost effective gamer box - but it would make a great ZFS box for 2 to 4 SATA drives (with the upgrades listed above [minus the graphics card]). Email me offline if I can answer any further questions. PS: It''ll probably take you 2 or 3 hours to evaluate every combination possible of the dell Vostro 200 box - but the price/performance is unbeatable and it''s hard to put together a comparable system, from parts, for less money. Obviously Dell gets Intel processors for way less than you and I. Regards, -- Al Hopper Logical Approach Inc,Plano,TX al at logical-approach.com Voice: 972.379.2133 Timezone: US CDT OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB) Member - Apr 2005 to Mar 2007 http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/ogb/ogb_2005-2007/
>You have not described your requirements (low-power ??, low-cost ??).But I''ll contribute some pointers anyway! :) Well for a home NAS I''m looking at noise as a big factor. Also for a 24x7 box, power consumption, that''s why the northbridge is putting me off slightly. So far the other solutions mentioned here, and what I''ve found on various blogs are going to be a lot more noisy and power hungry. Although the cost also makes this option very attractive, I''d be happy to pay a bit more for something with more grunt so long as it''s quiet and energy efficient. Although I don''t really mind if the box is slow, with ZFS what I''m looking for is secure data storage. But with only two SATA ports I don''t see how this board will quite acheive that. Unless I boot from USB and use 2 SATA and 2 IDE drives. btw I''m seeing mixed reports if the D945GCLF2 is seen as 64 bit by solaris. Anyway thanks all for the great feedback! -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 12:47 AM, Peter Bridge <peter_bridge at hotmail.com> wrote:> Well for a home NAS I''m looking at noise as a big factor. Also for a 24x7 box, power consumption, that''s why the northbridge is putting me off slightly.That''s why I built a full-sized tower using a Lian-Li case with noise dampening on the sides, robber grommets and such in the drive bays, etc..
Same case and same idea :) I have 2 dampered drives already installed from a previous project. Another 2 I pulled out to install into a qnap 209. Ideally I''d return the disks and replace the qnap with this new single ZFS NAS, although I''m quite fond of the qnap bt client, and can''t use all four SATA with this board anyway... -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
I just built a homeserver that pulls 62 watts from the plug at idle for ~$700. I had some of the parts lying around but even if you bought everything at frys you should be able to set yourself up for under 1K for the next 3-5 years. Seasonic 80 plus 300 watt power supply Intel DP35DP motherboard (onboard nic is an intel, has 6 sata from ich9) E5200 Wolfdale processor (5 watts at idle, 30 watts at load) 4 x 1TB Samsung EcoGreen 5400 rpm harddrives 4GB ram 80GB laptop harddrive I had lying around for the system disk Ati PCI 9200 video card I had lying around (pulls 2-3 watts) Cheapest mid tower case off newegg with free shipping The samsung drives are great, they don''t ever spindown. I had problems with some seagates a year or so back where the drive firmware would spin them down after 90 seconds of inactivity. The samsungs just chug along at 4-5 watts each. I use raidz on the 4 1TB drives and set copies=2 on the system drive. The real power savings is from the cpu. Any dual core 45nm intel chip idles at unbelivably low wattage. Add the 5400 rpm drives and you''ve got a nice cool running, quiet, low power system. If I only needed 1 TB I''d probably use the atom board with the two ports and a usb jump drive for the system disk, but I needed more space. Daniel On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 2:51 AM, Peter Bridge <peter_bridge at hotmail.com>wrote:> Same case and same idea :) I have 2 dampered drives already installed from > a previous project. Another 2 I pulled out to install into a qnap 209. > Ideally I''d return the disks and replace the qnap with this new single ZFS > NAS, although I''m quite fond of the qnap bt client, and can''t use all four > SATA with this board anyway... > -- > This message posted from opensolaris.org > _______________________________________________ > zfs-discuss mailing list > zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >-------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/attachments/20081026/ceb2a277/attachment.html>
For those of you who wants to build a NAS, this is mandatory reading I think. Read all comments too. http://breden.org.uk/2008/03/02/a-home-fileserver-using-zfs/ I use a P45 mobo, Intel Q9450, ATI4850 and 4 GB RAM. AOC SATA card with 8 Sata slots. 4 Samsung 500GB drives. Works excellent in a P182 antec. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
Bob Friesenhahn wrote:> AMD Athelon/Opteron dual core likely matches or exceeds > Intel quad core for ZFS use due to a less bottlenecked memory channel.How big is the difference? Does anyone have benchmarking results (maybe even when using ZFS on Solaris 10)? Martti
Out of interest, and reasonably on-topic, can anyone predict performance comparison (CIFS) between these two setups? 1) Dedicated Windows 2003 Server, Intel hardware SATA RAID controller (single raid 5 array, 8 disks) 2) OpenSolaris+ZFS+CIFS, 8 drives with a SuperMicro controller
On Wed, 29 Oct 2008, Martti Kuparinen wrote:> Bob Friesenhahn wrote: >> AMD Athelon/Opteron dual core likely matches or exceeds >> Intel quad core for ZFS use due to a less bottlenecked memory channel. > > How big is the difference? Does anyone have benchmarking results (maybe even > when using ZFS on Solaris 10)?The big question would be what should be benchmarked. ZFS is like a big RAM cache. The more RAM the better. You would be surprised how little disk activity there can really be on systems with a lot of RAM as long as synchronous writes are avoided. As a result, some common scenarios mostly exercise RAM rather than the disk channel. Unless you need a higher power CPU for other purposes, a ZFS-based server should focus on maximizing installed RAM. Bob =====================================Bob Friesenhahn bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/ GraphicsMagick Maintainer, http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/
On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 8:43 AM, Bob Friesenhahn <bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us> wrote:> On Wed, 29 Oct 2008, Martti Kuparinen wrote: > >> Bob Friesenhahn wrote: >>> AMD Athelon/Opteron dual core likely matches or exceeds >>> Intel quad core for ZFS use due to a less bottlenecked memory channel. >> >> How big is the difference? Does anyone have benchmarking results (maybe even >> when using ZFS on Solaris 10)? > > The big question would be what should be benchmarked. ZFS is like a > big RAM cache. The more RAM the better. You would be surprised how > little disk activity there can really be on systems with a lot of RAM > as long as synchronous writes are avoided. As a result, some common > scenarios mostly exercise RAM rather than the disk channel. > > Unless you need a higher power CPU for other purposes, a ZFS-based > server should focus on maximizing installed RAM.Agreed 100% It''s easy to find DDR2 RAM at around $20/gigabyte (based on 1Gb or 2Gb DIMMs) and I''ve seen some deals as low a $8/Gb for Kingston RAM. Regards, -- Al Hopper Logical Approach Inc,Plano,TX al at logical-approach.com Voice: 972.379.2133 Timezone: US CDT OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB) Member - Apr 2005 to Mar 2007 http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/ogb/ogb_2005-2007/
Al Hopper wrote:> On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 8:43 AM, Bob Friesenhahn > <bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us> wrote: > >> On Wed, 29 Oct 2008, Martti Kuparinen wrote: >> >> >>> Bob Friesenhahn wrote: >>> >>>> AMD Athelon/Opteron dual core likely matches or exceeds >>>> Intel quad core for ZFS use due to a less bottlenecked memory channel. >>>> >>> How big is the difference? Does anyone have benchmarking results (maybe even >>> when using ZFS on Solaris 10)? >>> >> The big question would be what should be benchmarked. ZFS is like a >> big RAM cache. The more RAM the better. You would be surprised how >> little disk activity there can really be on systems with a lot of RAM >> as long as synchronous writes are avoided. As a result, some common >> scenarios mostly exercise RAM rather than the disk channel. >> >> Unless you need a higher power CPU for other purposes, a ZFS-based >> server should focus on maximizing installed RAM. >> > > Agreed 100% > > It''s easy to find DDR2 RAM at around $20/gigabyte (based on 1Gb or 2Gb > DIMMs) and I''ve seen some deals as low a $8/Gb for Kingston RAM. >ECC? -- richard
> ECC?$60 unbuffered 4GB 800MHz DDR2 ECC CL5 DIMM (Kit Of 2) http://www.provantage.com/kingston-technology-kvr800d2e5k2-4g~7KIN90H4.htm for Intel 32x0 north bridge like http://www.provantage.com/supermicro-x7sbe~7SUPM11K.htm
Rob Logan wrote:> > ECC? > > $60 unbuffered 4GB 800MHz DDR2 ECC CL5 DIMM (Kit Of 2) > http://www.provantage.com/kingston-technology-kvr800d2e5k2-4g~7KIN90H4.htmGeez, I have to move to the US for cheap hardware. I''ve paid 120? for exactly that 4GB ECC kit (well, I bought two of these, so 240?) in Germany. -mg -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 225 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/attachments/20081029/fdef8b85/attachment.bin>
Just as a follow up. I went ahead with the original hardware purchase, it was so much cheaper than the alternatives it was hard to resist. Anyway, OS 2008-05 installed very nicely. Although it mentions 32bit while booting, so I need to investigate that at some point. The actual hardware seems stable and fast enough so far. The CPU fan is much louder than I expected, so I''ll probably swap that out since I want this box running 247 in the office and can''t stand noisy machines. Anyway I''m booting from a laptop ide drive with two sata disks in a mirrored zpool. This seems to work fine although my testing has been limited due to some network problems... I really need a step-by-step ''how to'' to access this box from my OSX Leopard based macbook pro. I''ve spent about 5 hours trying to get NFS working with minimal progress. I''ve tried with nwadm disabled, although the two lines I entered to turn it off seemed to miss alot of other config items, so I ended up turning it back on. The reason I did that was the dhcp was failing to get an address, or that''s what it looked like, so I wanted to try static address. Anyway I found a way for using a static address with nwadm turned on. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I can now ping between the machines, they have identicle users created id=501 and groups with id=501, but OSX just refuses in anyway to connect to the NFS share, from command line with various flag, or cmd k. I''m going to clean install open solaris in the morning, maybe with the newest build 100? and try again, but I''d really appreciate some help from someone that has got this working. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
>>>>> "pb" == Peter Bridge <peter_bridge at hotmail.com> writes:pb> I really need a step-by-step ''how to'' to access this box from pb> my OSX Leopard What you need for NFS on a laptop is a good automount daemon and a ''umount -f'' command that actually does what the man page claims. The automounter in Leopard works well. The one in Tiger doesn''t---has quirks and often needs to be rebooted. AFAICT both 10.4 and 10.5 have an ''umount -f'' that works better than Linux and *BSD. You can use the automounter by editing files in /etc, but a better way might be to use the Directory Utility. Here is an outdated guide, not for Leopard: http://www.behanna.org/osx/nfs/howto4.html The Leopard steps are: 1. Open Directory Utility 2. pick Mounts in the tab-bar 3. click the Lock in the lower-left corner and authenticate 4. press + 5. unroll Advanced Mount Parameters 6. fill out the form something like this: Remote NFS URL: nfs://10.100.100.149/export Mount location: /Network/terabithia/export Advanced Mount Parameters: nosuid nodev locallocks [x] Ignore "set user ID" privileges 7. Press Verify 8. Press Apply, or press Command-S the locallocks mount parameter should be removed. I need it with old versions of Linux and Mac OS 10.5. I don''t need it with 10.4+oldLinux, and hopefully 10.5+Solaris won''t need it either. There is a ''net'' mount parameter which changes Finder''s behavior. Also it might be better to mount on some tree outside /Network and /Volumes since these seem to have some strange special meanings. ymmv. At my site I also put ''umask 000'' in /etc/launchd.conf to, err....match user expectations of how the office used to work with SMB. For something fancier, you may have to get the Macs and Suns to share userids with LDAP. Someone recently posted a PDF here about an ozzie site serious about Macs that''d done so: http://www.afp548.com/filemgmt_data/files/OSX%20HSM.pdf Another thing worth knowing: macs throw up these boxes that say something like Server gone. [Disconnect] with a big red Disocnnect button. If your NFS server reboots, they''ll throw one of these boxes at you. It looks like you only have one choice. You actually have three: 1. ignore the box 2. press the tiny red [x] in the upper-left corner of the box 3. press disconnect If you do (3), Mac OS will do ''umount -f'' for you. At the time the box appears, the umount has not been done yet. If you do (1) or (2), any application using the NFS server (including potentially Finder and all its windows, not just the NFS windows) will pinwheel until the NFS server comes back. When it does come back, all the apps will continue without data loss, and if you did (1) the box will also disappear on its own. The error handling is quite good and in line with Unixy expectations and NFS statelessness. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 304 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/attachments/20081107/a9b8f758/attachment.bin>
Thanks for the replies, it seems like I may have to rewind a bit here and fix some network issues on the solaris box before I can move forward with the OSX connecting... As I mentioned, ping between boxes works fine. I can ping my osx box, my router (192.168.1.1) and my other NAS. But I last night I decided to have a try with SMB since I wasn''t getting far with NFS. That''s when I discovered the Solaris box can''t connect to the internet (needed to download some smb packages, or are they on disk somewhere?). Anyway I took the approach of doing a clean install, since I''ve played around with so many things trying to get NFS working. So after a clean install I noticed again that the dhcp had failed to assign ipaddress to the interface. So I started patching again things that seem to be missing, the hostname.rge0 file was missing, so I added an entry with my hostname (zfsnas). I also had to tweak the hosts file and add ''dns'' to nsswitch.conf and create a file resolv.conf. So here is my current setup: zfs at zfsnas:~# ifconfig -a lo0: flags=2001000849<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv4,VIRTUAL> mtu 8232 index 1 inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000 rge0: flags=201000843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv4,CoS> mtu 1500 index 2 inet 192.168.1.122 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255 ether 0:1c:c0:8e:a:3d lo0: flags=2002000849<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv6,VIRTUAL> mtu 8252 index 1 inet6 ::1/128 zfs at zfsnas:~# cat /etc/hostname.rge0 zfsnas zfs at zfsnas:~# cat /etc/hosts 127.0.0.1 localhost 192.168.1.122 zfsnas zfsnas.local loghost zfs at zfsnas:~# cat /etc/nodename zfsnas zfs at zfsnas:~# cat /etc/defaultrouter 192.168.1.1 zfs at zfsnas:~# cat /etc/nsswitch.conf ... hosts: files dns ... zfs at zfsnas:~# cat /etc/resolv.conf nameserver 192.168.1.1 zfs at zfsnas:~# cat /etc/nwam/llp rge0 static 192.168.1.122 zfs at zfsnas:~# netstat -rn Routing Table: IPv4 Destination Gateway Flags Ref Use Interface -------------------- -------------------- ----- ----- ---------- --------- default 192.168.1.1 UG 1 3 192.168.1.0 192.168.1.122 U 1 2 rge0 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 UH 1 294 lo0 But even with all this, I can''t connect outside of my LAN. Should I switch from nwam to a manual configuration? or should nwam be able to handle this. It seems strange already the the dhcp default setup fails. Anyway, I don''t need internet access from this box, I was just trying to workout how to download and install SMB. But it did make me wonder if this might be related to routing issues that might also affect the NFS stuff... With regard to ZFS, I have a mirrored pool of two disks ''data'' and I create a fs as follows: zfs at zfsnas:~# zfs create -o casesensitivity=mixed data/backup zfs at zfsnas:~# zfs set sharenfs=on data/backup zfs at zfsnas:~# zfs set atime=off data Next I used system - administration - shared folders to add the /data/backup directory for sharing with any computer in my LAN. This seemed to work previously, but now I''m noticing that since my fresh install nothing gets remembered. WHen I re-open the shares gui, the previous share is gone. Any tips on this one too? Sorry for so many questions, but I''m quite new to all this, but determined to get things working now that I bought some specific hardware for the job. Would it be worth trying with 2008-11 i noticed a 101a rc1b build that''s now available, or is it going to be too newbie unfriendly? -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
I had a problem like that on my laptop that also has an rge interface, ping worked fine, but ssh and ftp didn''t. To get around it I had to add set ip:dohwcksum = 0 to /etc/system and reboot. That worked and is worth a try for you :) Cheers, Alan -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
Since you are using the rge driver, you might be getting bit by CR6686415. http://bugs.opensolaris.org/view_bug.do?bug_id=6686415 The symptoms are that some packets work, more likely with small packets like pings, but large packets might not work. I''ve also had trouble not being able to talk to systems on my LAN, but able to get to the internet. Try the workaround in the CR. -- richard Peter Bridge wrote:> Thanks for the replies, it seems like I may have to rewind a bit here and fix some network issues on the solaris box before I can move forward with the OSX connecting... > > As I mentioned, ping between boxes works fine. I can ping my osx box, my router (192.168.1.1) and my other NAS. But I last night I decided to have a try with SMB since I wasn''t getting far with NFS. That''s when I discovered the Solaris box can''t connect to the internet (needed to download some smb packages, or are they on disk somewhere?). Anyway I took the approach of doing a clean install, since I''ve played around with so many things trying to get NFS working. > > So after a clean install I noticed again that the dhcp had failed to assign ipaddress to the interface. So I started patching again things that seem to be missing, the hostname.rge0 file was missing, so I added an entry with my hostname (zfsnas). I also had to tweak the hosts file and add ''dns'' to nsswitch.conf and create a file resolv.conf. So here is my current setup: > > > > zfs at zfsnas:~# ifconfig -a > lo0: flags=2001000849<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv4,VIRTUAL> mtu 8232 index 1 > inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000 > rge0: flags=201000843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv4,CoS> mtu 1500 index 2 > inet 192.168.1.122 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255 > ether 0:1c:c0:8e:a:3d > lo0: flags=2002000849<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv6,VIRTUAL> mtu 8252 index 1 > inet6 ::1/128 > > zfs at zfsnas:~# cat /etc/hostname.rge0 > zfsnas > > zfs at zfsnas:~# cat /etc/hosts > 127.0.0.1 localhost > 192.168.1.122 zfsnas zfsnas.local loghost > > zfs at zfsnas:~# cat /etc/nodename > zfsnas > > zfs at zfsnas:~# cat /etc/defaultrouter > 192.168.1.1 > > zfs at zfsnas:~# cat /etc/nsswitch.conf > ... > hosts: files dns > ... > > zfs at zfsnas:~# cat /etc/resolv.conf > nameserver 192.168.1.1 > > zfs at zfsnas:~# cat /etc/nwam/llp > rge0 static 192.168.1.122 > > zfs at zfsnas:~# netstat -rn > > Routing Table: IPv4 > Destination Gateway Flags Ref Use Interface > -------------------- -------------------- ----- ----- ---------- --------- > default 192.168.1.1 UG 1 3 > 192.168.1.0 192.168.1.122 U 1 2 rge0 > 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 UH 1 294 lo0 > > But even with all this, I can''t connect outside of my LAN. Should I switch from nwam to a manual configuration? or should nwam be able to handle this. It seems strange already the the dhcp default setup fails. Anyway, I don''t need internet access from this box, I was just trying to workout how to download and install SMB. But it did make me wonder if this might be related to routing issues that might also affect the NFS stuff... > > With regard to ZFS, I have a mirrored pool of two disks ''data'' and I create a fs as follows: > > zfs at zfsnas:~# zfs create -o casesensitivity=mixed data/backup > zfs at zfsnas:~# zfs set sharenfs=on data/backup > zfs at zfsnas:~# zfs set atime=off data > > Next I used system - administration - shared folders to add the /data/backup directory for sharing with any computer in my LAN. This seemed to work previously, but now I''m noticing that since my fresh install nothing gets remembered. WHen I re-open the shares gui, the previous share is gone. Any tips on this one too? > > Sorry for so many questions, but I''m quite new to all this, but determined to get things working now that I bought some specific hardware for the job. Would it be worth trying with 2008-11 i noticed a 101a rc1b build that''s now available, or is it going to be too newbie unfriendly? >
wow, well done peeps, that was the problem! Request to re-number that bug to 666. Totally evil, and what a waste of time that has caused. Anyway, I have internet access from the box, which allowed me to easily install SMB which after a bit of messing around has now allowed me to access the box from OSX via SMB :)) I re-tested the NFS, but that still failed, but to be honest, I''m happier with smb anyway since it allows my other machines easier access to the zfs pool. thanks to all for the emails and postings here. Peter -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
John Doe
2008-Nov-14 14:28 UTC
[zfs-discuss] Solaris Compatibility on Foxconn or Gigabyte MB
Hi guys. Read this thread, good info! I''m now considering getting one of the MBs recommended in the Tom''s Hardware review, to which a URL was posted earlier. The article is here: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-e7200-g31,2039.html I would like to know if any of you can confirm Solaris or OpenSolaris compatibility with these two motherboards: Foxconn G31MG-S and Gigabyte GA-EG31MF-S2 I didn''t find anything by googling or from the Hardware Compatibility List. Thanks! -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
OpenSolaris + ZFS achieves 120MB/sec read speed with 4 SATA 7200 rpm discs. 440 MB/Sec read speed with 7 SATA discs. 220MB/sec write speed. 2GB/sec write speed with 48 discs (on SUN Thumper x4600). I have links to websites were Ive read this. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
> If you want a small system that is pre-built, look at > every possible > permutation/combination of the Dell Vostro 200 box.I agree, the Vostro 200 systems are an excellent deal. Update to the latest BIOS and they will recognize 8GB of RAM. The ONE problem with them, is that Dell does not enable AHCI, so SATA access is slower than it needs to be. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
IIRC, the 32-bit reference you see is only for the installer, which doesn''t need to be 64-bit. The installer does detect 64-bit hardware during the install, and behaves accordingly. Blake On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 5:56 PM, Peter Bridge <peter_bridge at hotmail.com> wrote:> Just as a follow up. I went ahead with the original hardware purchase, it was so much cheaper than the alternatives it was hard to resist. > > Anyway, OS 2008-05 installed very nicely. Although it mentions 32bit while booting, so I need to investigate that at some point. The actual hardware seems stable and fast enough so far. The CPU fan is much louder than I expected, so I''ll probably swap that out since I want this box running 247 in the office and can''t stand noisy machines. Anyway I''m booting from a laptop ide drive with two sata disks in a mirrored zpool. This seems to work fine although my testing has been limited due to some network problems... > > I really need a step-by-step ''how to'' to access this box from my OSX Leopard based macbook pro. > > I''ve spent about 5 hours trying to get NFS working with minimal progress. I''ve tried with nwadm disabled, although the two lines I entered to turn it off seemed to miss alot of other config items, so I ended up turning it back on. The reason I did that was the dhcp was failing to get an address, or that''s what it looked like, so I wanted to try static address. Anyway I found a way for using a static address with nwadm turned on. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I can now ping between the machines, they have identicle users created id=501 and groups with id=501, but OSX just refuses in anyway to connect to the NFS share, from command line with various flag, or cmd k. > > I''m going to clean install open solaris in the morning, maybe with the newest build 100? and try again, but I''d really appreciate some help from someone that has got this working. > -- > This message posted from opensolaris.org > _______________________________________________ > zfs-discuss mailing list > zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >
>>>>> "ah" == Al Hopper <al at logical-approach.com> writes:ah> If you want a small system that is pre-built, look at every ah> possible permutation/combination of the Dell Vostro 200 box. I guess Dell is backing out of this and a few other flashy bargains: http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/biztech/halfprice-offer-a-mistake-says-dell/2008/11/18/1226770413954.html according to Sydney Morning Herald, if they pull this shit again you might throw a wrench into their scheme by paying some other way than credit card, because at least under Ozzie law that makes a stronger contract. but US consumer laws always seem to be weaker, and I guess bank transfer and BPay are more an EU/AU thing. Just remember, Dell is not ``that company which sells insanely cheap basic systems of reasonable quality.'''' Rather it''s ``the giant company that gives each customer a different price, engages in market-dumping, and pulls gimmicky come-on advertisements then plays order-cancelling games.'''' think crazy-eddie and hired furniture. scratchy tan couches with cigarette burns and vodka stains. we love you, Dell. xx. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 304 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/attachments/20081118/bcabf199/attachment.bin>
I''m looking to do the same thing - home NAS with ZFS. I''m debating several routes/options, and I''d appreciate opinions from folks here. My system will primarily be a file & music server, serving CIFS and some NFS as well as driving multiple concurrent audio streams via SqueezeCenter, and perhaps eventually videos via something like MythTV. I''m also contemplating making it a Sun Ray server. I don''t want to run out of disk space for a long time - I''d like >= 3TB to start. Decision #1: AMD vs. Intel I''m drawn to quad core, perhaps for silly reasons. I''m also drawn to AMD (for price and RAM performance). And finally I''m drawn to ASUS motherboards because there are so many options in the HCL. I want lots of SATA ports and support for 8GB RAM - option a: ASUS M3A-H/HDMI ($56 at Newegg) with AMD Phenom 9600 ($119 at Newegg) - option b: ASUS P5K Deluxe ($169 at Newegg) with Intel Quad Q6600 ($189 at Newegg) Any reason to go with Intel? Any better option going the AMD route (perhaps the Quad core chip offers no value?) Decision #2: 1.5TB Seagate vs. 1TB WD (or someone else) I''ve heard lots of stories about Seagate reliability being poor, especially in RAID configurations. WD has a good reputation, especially with their more expensive E3 drives. Reliability is a concern both from a time point of view (spending time getting/installing replacements and downtime until it is in), as well as potential data reliability if a multiple-failure occurs. - option a: 3 1.5TB Seagate drives (in Raid-Z) or 4 1.5TB in Raid-Z2 ($129 at Newegg) - option b: 4 1TB WD drives (in Raid-Z) or 5 in Raid-Z2 - option b(1): WD RE3 drives ($150 via eBay seller) - option b(2): WD Caviar Black ($119 at Newegg) - option b(3): WD Caviar Green ($119 at Newegg) Do I loose much in performance going Green vs. Black? Do I gain anything in reliability? Anything measurable (given other system components) in power savings? Decision #3: Raid-Z vs. Raid-Z2 I understand that with very large drives, the chance of a momentary block read failure is near (or in excess) of the 1/# blocks on disk (so you would likely get one of these if reading/copying the entire 1-1.5TB), and while subsequent re-tries would fix this it would be seen as a RAID failure in the moment. But the more I read up on ZFS, the less likely a double-fault situation appears that it''d occur, given the fix-on-error-detection and continuous cleaning of the disk. - option a: Raid-Z - option b: Raid-Z2 Decision #4: file system layout I''d like to have ZFS root mirrored. Do we simply use a portion of the existing disks for this, or add two disks just for root? Use USB-2 flash as those 2 disks? And where does swap go? - option a: [3 disks] - option a(1): reserve ~50GB from all three, ZFS mirror across all three, and put swap into that 50GB - option a(2): reserve ~50GB from all three, ZFS mirror across first two, and put swap into the third 50GB (rather large that...) - option a(3): reserve ~50GB from all three, ZFS mirror across first two, and put swap into that 50GB; ignore the 50GB in the third - option b: [4 disks] - option b(1): reserve ~25GB from all four, ZFS pool/mirror across all four, and put swap into that pooled 50GB - option b(2): reserve ~50GB from all four, ZFS mirror across first two, and put swap into the third 50GB (rather large that...) and ignore the fourth 50GB - option b(3): reserve ~50GB from all four, ZFS mirror across first two, and put swap into the third 50GB (rather large that...) and ignore the fourth 50GB - option b(4): reserve ~50GB from all four, ZFS mirror across first two, and put swap into that 50GB (rather large that...); ignore the third and fourth 50GB - option c: [5 disks] - option c(n): you get the idea... - option d: [n disks + 2 "root" disks] - option d(1) use some small cheap pair of SATA (or even IDE) disks for mirrored root/swap - option d(2) use ~8GB USB2 flash drives for mirrored root/swap (and place things like /opt into the larger "data" array) Many thanks for your feedback! Peter -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
Dude, How much is your time worth? Consider the engineering effort going into every Sun Server. Any system from Sun is more than sufficient for a home server. You want more disks, then buy one with more slots. Done. Search "http://store.sun.com" for the item that matches your needs and run with it. Sun currently has a promotion on X4150 Servers... That will easily be able to serve NFS, SunRay, etc... to your home. I believe when you factor in all the hardware (motherboard, cpu, memory, disks, cabling, power supply, case, etc.) and all your time (installation, testing, debugging, testing, hardware DOAs, testing, waiting for replacements, testing, repairing/replacing faulty "consumer" grade drives, testing...), I think you will quickly find the current X4150 server to be a compelling deal. I currently own/use an X2100 server for the same purpose without issues. Cheers, Joel. Proud to be "Flying Our Own Dog Food" ;-) Decision #1: Buy an engineered box. http://www.sun.com/servers/x64/x4150/ http://shop.sun.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/Sun_NorthAmerica-Sun_Store_US-Site/en_US/-/USD/ViewStandardCatalog-Browse?CategoryName=HID-2133736376&CategoryDomainName=Sun_NorthAmerica-Sun_Store_US-SunCatalog * Quad-Core Intel, 4GB RAM ... Promotional Priced... $2035. Get a real/tested box. Forget the hassles. Decision #2: * With disks, you get what you pay for.... What does Sun use... * Be careful at/beyond 1TB for Boot Drives.... Decision #3: * What is your data production requirements? * Keep in mind RAID-Z2 with 3 disks is essentially 3way mirror... * Have you considered Mirrored? * How many disks are you planning on having in the system? * Performance, Space, Protection: Choose 2. Decision #4: * See Decision #3, above. Cheers, Joel. On 01/07/09 03:29, Peter Korn wrote:> I''m looking to do the same thing - home NAS with ZFS. > > I''m debating several routes/options, and I''d appreciate opinions from folks here. > > My system will primarily be a file & music server, serving CIFS and some NFS as well as driving multiple concurrent audio streams via SqueezeCenter, and perhaps eventually videos via something like MythTV. I''m also contemplating making it a Sun Ray server. I don''t want to run out of disk space for a long time - I''d like >= 3TB to start. > > Decision #1: AMD vs. Intel > I''m drawn to quad core, perhaps for silly reasons. I''m also drawn to AMD (for price and RAM performance). And finally I''m drawn to ASUS motherboards because there are so many options in the HCL. I want lots of SATA ports and support for 8GB RAM > - option a: ASUS M3A-H/HDMI ($56 at Newegg) with AMD Phenom 9600 ($119 at Newegg) > - option b: ASUS P5K Deluxe ($169 at Newegg) with Intel Quad Q6600 ($189 at Newegg) > Any reason to go with Intel? Any better option going the AMD route (perhaps the Quad core chip offers no value?) > > Decision #2: 1.5TB Seagate vs. 1TB WD (or someone else) > I''ve heard lots of stories about Seagate reliability being poor, especially in RAID configurations. WD has a good reputation, especially with their more expensive E3 drives. Reliability is a concern both from a time point of view (spending time getting/installing replacements and downtime until it is in), as well as potential data reliability if a multiple-failure occurs. > - option a: 3 1.5TB Seagate drives (in Raid-Z) or 4 1.5TB in Raid-Z2 ($129 at Newegg) > - option b: 4 1TB WD drives (in Raid-Z) or 5 in Raid-Z2 > - option b(1): WD RE3 drives ($150 via eBay seller) > - option b(2): WD Caviar Black ($119 at Newegg) > - option b(3): WD Caviar Green ($119 at Newegg) > Do I loose much in performance going Green vs. Black? Do I gain anything in reliability? Anything measurable (given other system components) in power savings? > > Decision #3: Raid-Z vs. Raid-Z2 > I understand that with very large drives, the chance of a momentary block read failure is near (or in excess) of the 1/# blocks on disk (so you would likely get one of these if reading/copying the entire 1-1.5TB), and while subsequent re-tries would fix this it would be seen as a RAID failure in the moment. But the more I read up on ZFS, the less likely a double-fault situation appears that it''d occur, given the fix-on-error-detection and continuous cleaning of the disk. > - option a: Raid-Z > - option b: Raid-Z2 > > Decision #4: file system layout > I''d like to have ZFS root mirrored. Do we simply use a portion of the existing disks for this, or add two disks just for root? Use USB-2 flash as those 2 disks? And where does swap go? > - option a: [3 disks] > - option a(1): reserve ~50GB from all three, ZFS mirror across all three, and put swap into that 50GB > - option a(2): reserve ~50GB from all three, ZFS mirror across first two, and put swap into the third 50GB (rather large that...) > - option a(3): reserve ~50GB from all three, ZFS mirror across first two, and put swap into that 50GB; ignore the 50GB in the third > > - option b: [4 disks] > - option b(1): reserve ~25GB from all four, ZFS pool/mirror across all four, and put swap into that pooled 50GB > - option b(2): reserve ~50GB from all four, ZFS mirror across first two, and put swap into the third 50GB (rather large that...) and ignore the fourth 50GB > - option b(3): reserve ~50GB from all four, ZFS mirror across first two, and put swap into the third 50GB (rather large that...) and ignore the fourth 50GB > - option b(4): reserve ~50GB from all four, ZFS mirror across first two, and put swap into that 50GB (rather large that...); ignore the third and fourth 50GB > > - option c: [5 disks] > - option c(n): you get the idea... > > - option d: [n disks + 2 "root" disks] > - option d(1) use some small cheap pair of SATA (or even IDE) disks for mirrored root/swap > - option d(2) use ~8GB USB2 flash drives for mirrored root/swap (and place things like /opt into the larger "data" array) > > > Many thanks for your feedback! > > Peter >
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 10:45, Joel Buckley <Joel.Buckley at sun.com> wrote:> Consider the engineering effort going into every Sun Server. > Any system from Sun is more than sufficient for a home server. > You want more disks, then buy one with more slots. Done.In my experience, buying disks (or disk-related things---JBODs, NASs, etc.) from Sun is frustratingly expensive. Sure, the x4150 linked later is a good deal (if you don''t mind spending a couple grand on a home system), but it only takes 2.5" drives inside it. Even with 146GB SAS drives (the largest bundled with it) 8 drives doesn''t give 3TB. So, you need an external SAS or SCSI card at $500, and a place to put more (preferably 3.5") disks. Follow, if you will, the trek of someone attempting to do that at home. Let''s see... Sun.com, storage, find a product. Disk storage, that''s right. Ah! The J4200 looks like just the thing. I want it with 4 1TB disks, so pick the model that includes 2 and add 2 more. Throw in a SAS cable so I can attach this to the x4150. Now take a look at the price... $5600. Add the host and the SAS card and the total is $8100 for a lousy 3 TB of disk space. I can''t (for home use) warrant spending $8k for a>> file & music server, I don''t care how well-tested it is, I can buy eight different kinds of hardware with 3TB of disk space for that, and I''d wager at least three of them would work out of the box, and then I''d have more available disk space than the Sun solution. For small enterprises like a home media box, I don''t see the point of big, expensive, loud (!) machines like the x4150 et al.>> Decision #2: 1.5TB Seagate vs. 1TB WD (or someone else)The 1.5TB drives have a sketchy reputation as compared to any other Seagate drives. The rumor is that reliability was not high enough for the OEMs to carry them, so that''s why they''re so cheap. I have a thrown-together interface [1] that gets prices for drives from several online stores, and lets you sort by price, size, or price per gigabyte. The Samsung HD103UJ drives are nice, if you''re not using NVidia controllers - there''s a bug in either the drives or the controllers that makes them drop drives fairly frequently. They work fine with other controllers, though; I''m using 4 of them with a Marvell controller with no problems. Will [1]: http://will.incorrige.us/price-checker.cgi?sortby=costperGB
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 11:45 AM, Tim <tim at tcsac.net> wrote:> > > >> >> Decision #2: 1.5TB Seagate vs. 1TB WD (or someone else) >> The 1.5TB drives have a sketchy reputation as compared to any other >> Seagate drives. The rumor is that reliability was not high enough for >> the OEMs to carry them, so that''s why they''re so cheap. I have a >> thrown-together interface [1] that gets prices for drives from several >> online stores, and lets you sort by price, size, or price per >> gigabyte. The Samsung HD103UJ drives are nice, if you''re not using >> NVidia controllers - there''s a bug in either the drives or the >> controllers that makes them drop drives fairly frequently. They work >> fine with other controllers, though; I''m using 4 of them with a >> Marvell controller with no problems. >> >> Will >> >> [1]: http://will.incorrige.us/price-checker.cgi?sortby=costperGB >> > > The 1.5TB drives had some firmware issues when they were first released. > That would be why they were viewed as "sketchy". That has since been fixed > and they''re just as good as everything else. > > The reason they''re so cheap is because they''re the same 7200.11 form factor > as the rest of the line-up so the cost difference to produce them (from what > i understand) is negligible. That, and there''s some real competition in > that industry, which is always nice :) > > --Tim >-------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/attachments/20090107/368cff5b/attachment.html>
So I have just finished building something similar to this... I''m finally replacing my Pentium II 400Mhz fileserver! My setup is: Opensolaris 2008.11 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138117 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145184 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103255 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129025 (there is no power supply here I had one of those too) I ended up paying $278 The case and everything makes it super quiet, and it runs very cool. Still have a power test to run and see but I''m guessing 125 - 150 watts. I had hard drives available, and using a USB DVD/CD drive for installation I am using 2 ATA drives mirrored for the root pool I am using 6 500GB (hitachi) sata drives in raidz for data with the onboard interface. The initial iozone test I ran, under ideal block sizes etc, I could sustain enough to saturate the 1GB interface. Real world, I haven''t been able to see what my real utilization is. I use this mostly to store media (movies, mp3s, etc) which I play with a mythtv box (just using NFS as the share). Also planning to use this as a backup server for the other machines in the house (considering running Amanda at home for this) I''m usually not doing heavy file I/O, so I''ve also put a virtual machine on here with virtual box for casual use for other stuff. During the process I swapped the whole thing to ubuntu on a usb flash and ran the opensolaris fileserver as a VM with VMWare...but I ended up just not happy with that in the end. The usb flash I had was OK, but it''s not a hard drive. With opensolaris, I can still play flash stuff from Hulu fullscreen in HD with the onboard video. I''ve been trying to remember why I still need windows for a desktop and have been debating just killing that PC as well. Most of the things that I used windows for (ripping a DVD, etc) can be done with a VM with virtualbox...it''s slow, but it works. I also don''t re-encode video at all. I don''t know if mythtv will actually run on opensolaris...that would be cool if it did. As far as a fileserver that has capacity to do other stuff, I''m very happy with this setup. As for the person who suggested a Sun x4150. Those are extremely loud because of the fans. There is no way I could run one of those at my house because of that. It was designed for a datacenter (and I have run them there). -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
> The Samsung HD103UJ drives are nice, if you''re not using > NVidia controllers - there''s a bug in either the drives or the > controllers that makes them drop drives fairly frequently.Do you happen to have more details about this problem? Or some pointers? Thanks -- Volker -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Volker A. Brandt Consulting and Support for Sun Solaris Brandt & Brandt Computer GmbH WWW: http://www.bb-c.de/ Am Wiesenpfad 6, 53340 Meckenheim Email: vab at bb-c.de Handelsregister: Amtsgericht Bonn, HRB 10513 Schuhgr??e: 45 Gesch?ftsf?hrer: Rainer J. H. Brandt und Volker A. Brandt
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 7:45 AM, Joel Buckley <Joel.Buckley at sun.com> wrote:> How much is your time worth?Quite a bit.> Consider the engineering effort going into every Sun Server. > Any system from Sun is more than sufficient for a home server. > You want more disks, then buy one with more slots. Done.A few years ago, I put together the NAS box currently in use at home for $300 for 1TB of space. Mind you, I recycled the RAM from another box and the four 250GB disks were free. I think 250 drives were around $200 at the time, so let''s say the system price was $1200. I don''t think there''s a Sun server that takes 4+ drives anywhere near $1200. The X4200 uses 2.5" drives, but costs $4255. Actually adding more drives ups the cost further. That means the afternoon I spent setting my server up was worth $3000. I should tell my boss that. A more reasonable comparison would be the Ultra 24. A system with 4x250 drives is $1650. I could build a 4 TB system today for *less* than my 1TB system of 2 years ago, so let''s use 3x750 + 1x250 drives. (That''s all the store will let me) and the price jumps to $2641. Assume that I buy the cheapest x64 system (the X2100 M2 at $1228) and add a drive tray because I want 4 drives ... well I can''t. The cheapest drive tray is $7465. I have trouble justifying Sun hardware for many business applications that don''t require SPARC, let alone for the home. For custom systems that most tinkerers would want at home, a shop like Silicon Mechanics (http://www.siliconmechanics.com/) (or even Dell or HP) is almost always a better deal on hardware. -B -- Brandon High : bhigh at freaks.com
Hello high buckley, OMG, in that spirit, I would suggest to go get a $99 per year per 1 TB web-based cloudy storage somewhere, if you don''t care about your baby data... what''s $8K for enterprises?! ;-) z, see pic again ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brandon High" <bhigh at freaks.com> To: "Joel Buckley" <Joel.Buckley at sun.com> Cc: <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <Peter.Korn at sun.com> Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 7:53 PM Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS?> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 7:45 AM, Joel Buckley <Joel.Buckley at sun.com> wrote: >> How much is your time worth? > > Quite a bit. > >> Consider the engineering effort going into every Sun Server. >> Any system from Sun is more than sufficient for a home server. >> You want more disks, then buy one with more slots. Done. > > A few years ago, I put together the NAS box currently in use at home > for $300 for 1TB of space. Mind you, I recycled the RAM from another > box and the four 250GB disks were free. I think 250 drives were around > $200 at the time, so let''s say the system price was $1200. > > I don''t think there''s a Sun server that takes 4+ drives anywhere near > $1200. The X4200 uses 2.5" drives, but costs $4255. Actually adding > more drives ups the cost further. That means the afternoon I spent > setting my server up was worth $3000. I should tell my boss that. > > A more reasonable comparison would be the Ultra 24. A system with > 4x250 drives is $1650. I could build a 4 TB system today for *less* > than my 1TB system of 2 years ago, so let''s use 3x750 + 1x250 drives. > (That''s all the store will let me) and the price jumps to $2641. > > Assume that I buy the cheapest x64 system (the X2100 M2 at $1228) and > add a drive tray because I want 4 drives ... well I can''t. The > cheapest drive tray is $7465. > > I have trouble justifying Sun hardware for many business applications > that don''t require SPARC, let alone for the home. For custom systems > that most tinkerers would want at home, a shop like Silicon Mechanics > (http://www.siliconmechanics.com/) (or even Dell or HP) is almost > always a better deal on hardware. > > -B > > -- > Brandon High : bhigh at freaks.com > _______________________________________________ > zfs-discuss mailing list > zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss-------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: joetucci.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 31262 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/attachments/20090107/9d72514f/attachment.jpg>
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 4:53 PM, Brandon High <bhigh at freaks.com> wrote:> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 7:45 AM, Joel Buckley <Joel.Buckley at sun.com> wrote: >> How much is your time worth? > > Quite a bit. > >> Consider the engineering effort going into every Sun Server. >> Any system from Sun is more than sufficient for a home server. >> You want more disks, then buy one with more slots. Done. > > A few years ago, I put together the NAS box currently in use at home > for $300 for 1TB of space. Mind you, I recycled the RAM from another > box and the four 250GB disks were free. I think 250 drives were around > $200 at the time, so let''s say the system price was $1200. > > I don''t think there''s a Sun server that takes 4+ drives anywhere near > $1200. The X4200 uses 2.5" drives, but costs $4255. Actually adding > more drives ups the cost further. That means the afternoon I spent > setting my server up was worth $3000. I should tell my boss that. > > A more reasonable comparison would be the Ultra 24. A system with > 4x250 drives is $1650. I could build a 4 TB system today for *less* > than my 1TB system of 2 years ago, so let''s use 3x750 + 1x250 drives. > (That''s all the store will let me) and the price jumps to $2641. > > Assume that I buy the cheapest x64 system (the X2100 M2 at $1228) and > add a drive tray because I want 4 drives ... well I can''t. The > cheapest drive tray is $7465. > > I have trouble justifying Sun hardware for many business applications > that don''t require SPARC, let alone for the home. For custom systems > that most tinkerers would want at home, a shop like Silicon Mechanics > (http://www.siliconmechanics.com/) (or even Dell or HP) is almost > always a better deal on hardware.I agree completely. About a year ago I spent around $800 (w/o drives) on a NAS box for home. I used a 4x PCI-X single-Xeon Supermicro MB, a giant case, and a single 8-port Supermicro SATA card. Then I dropped a pair of 80 GB boot drives and 9x 500 GB drives into it. With raidz2 plus a spare, that gives me around 2.7T of usable space. When I filled that up a few weeks back, I bought 2 more 8-port SATA cards, 2 Supermicro CSE-M35T-1B 5-drive hot-swap bays, and 9 1.5T drives, all for under $2k. That''s around $0.25/GB for the expansion and $0.36 overall, including last year''s expensive 500G drives. The closest that I can come to this config using current Sun hardware is probably the X4540 w/ 500G drives; that''s $35k for 14T of usable disk (5x 8-way raidz2 + 1 spare + 2 boot disks), $2.48/GB. It''s much nicer hardware but I don''t care. I''d also need an electrician (for 2x 240V circuits), a dedicated server room in my house (for the fan noise), and probably a divorce lawyer :-). Sun''s hardware really isn''t price-competitive on the low end, especially when commercial support offerings have no value to you. There''s nothing really wrong with this, as long as you understand that Sun''s really only going to be selling into shops where Sun''s support and extra engineering makes financial sense. In Sun''s defense, this is kind of an odd system, specially built for unusual requirements. My NAS box works well enough for me. It''s probably eaten ~20 hours of my time over the past year, partially because my Solaris is really rusty and partially because pkg has left me with broken, unbootable systems twice :-(. It''s hard to see how better hardware would have helped with that, though. Scott
ok, Scott, that sounded sincere. I am not going to do the pic thing on you. But do I have to spell this out to you -- somethings are invented not for home use? Cindy, would you want to do ZFS at home, or just having some wine and music? Can we focus on commercial usage? please! ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org> To: "Brandon High" <bhigh at freaks.com> Cc: <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <Peter.Korn at sun.com> Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 9:28 PM Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS?> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 4:53 PM, Brandon High <bhigh at freaks.com> wrote: >> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 7:45 AM, Joel Buckley <Joel.Buckley at sun.com> >> wrote: >>> How much is your time worth? >> >> Quite a bit. >> >>> Consider the engineering effort going into every Sun Server. >>> Any system from Sun is more than sufficient for a home server. >>> You want more disks, then buy one with more slots. Done. >> >> A few years ago, I put together the NAS box currently in use at home >> for $300 for 1TB of space. Mind you, I recycled the RAM from another >> box and the four 250GB disks were free. I think 250 drives were around >> $200 at the time, so let''s say the system price was $1200. >> >> I don''t think there''s a Sun server that takes 4+ drives anywhere near >> $1200. The X4200 uses 2.5" drives, but costs $4255. Actually adding >> more drives ups the cost further. That means the afternoon I spent >> setting my server up was worth $3000. I should tell my boss that. >> >> A more reasonable comparison would be the Ultra 24. A system with >> 4x250 drives is $1650. I could build a 4 TB system today for *less* >> than my 1TB system of 2 years ago, so let''s use 3x750 + 1x250 drives. >> (That''s all the store will let me) and the price jumps to $2641. >> >> Assume that I buy the cheapest x64 system (the X2100 M2 at $1228) and >> add a drive tray because I want 4 drives ... well I can''t. The >> cheapest drive tray is $7465. >> >> I have trouble justifying Sun hardware for many business applications >> that don''t require SPARC, let alone for the home. For custom systems >> that most tinkerers would want at home, a shop like Silicon Mechanics >> (http://www.siliconmechanics.com/) (or even Dell or HP) is almost >> always a better deal on hardware. > > I agree completely. About a year ago I spent around $800 (w/o drives) > on a NAS box for home. I used a 4x PCI-X single-Xeon Supermicro MB, a > giant case, and a single 8-port Supermicro SATA card. Then I dropped > a pair of 80 GB boot drives and 9x 500 GB drives into it. With raidz2 > plus a spare, that gives me around 2.7T of usable space. When I > filled that up a few weeks back, I bought 2 more 8-port SATA cards, 2 > Supermicro CSE-M35T-1B 5-drive hot-swap bays, and 9 1.5T drives, all > for under $2k. That''s around $0.25/GB for the expansion and $0.36 > overall, including last year''s expensive 500G drives. > > The closest that I can come to this config using current Sun hardware > is probably the X4540 w/ 500G drives; that''s $35k for 14T of usable > disk (5x 8-way raidz2 + 1 spare + 2 boot disks), $2.48/GB. It''s much > nicer hardware but I don''t care. I''d also need an electrician (for 2x > 240V circuits), a dedicated server room in my house (for the fan > noise), and probably a divorce lawyer :-). > > Sun''s hardware really isn''t price-competitive on the low end, > especially when commercial support offerings have no value to you. > There''s nothing really wrong with this, as long as you understand that > Sun''s really only going to be selling into shops where Sun''s support > and extra engineering makes financial sense. In Sun''s defense, this > is kind of an odd system, specially built for unusual requirements. > > My NAS box works well enough for me. It''s probably eaten ~20 hours of > my time over the past year, partially because my Solaris is really > rusty and partially because pkg has left me with broken, unbootable > systems twice :-(. It''s hard to see how better hardware would have > helped with that, though. > > > Scott > _______________________________________________ > zfs-discuss mailing list > zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 6:43 PM, JZ <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> wrote:> ok, Scott, that sounded sincere. I am not going to do the pic thing on you. > > But do I have to spell this out to you -- somethings are invented not for > home use?Yeah, I''m sincere, but I''ve ordered more or less the same type of hardware for commercial uses in the past. There are a number of uses for big, slow, cheap storage systems. Disk-based backup is an easy one--from a price/capacity standpoint, it''s really hard to beat a rackload of 4U systems stuffed full of cheap disks. Not every application needs redundant power, multi-pathed disks, highly-engineered servers, and a fleet of support engineers waiting for your call. In my experience, very few applications actually need that--cheap, somewhat reliable systems with good replication and failover usually beat "enterprise-grade" hardware anytime that the cheaper hardware is even an option. If you have a high transaction rate, a need for perfect coherency and consistency, and failure is expensive, then spending 3-10x the money for slightly higher performance and slightly lower failure rates makes perfect sense. Then again, I''m used to having enough quantity flying around to make the cost differences worth it. Spending 100 hours of staff time to save $2k up front is dumb. The last time I built commercial storage servers like this, it took about two extra months of my time dealing with vendors and qualifying hardware, but we shaved $250k off of a $350k budget when the company was strapped for cash. That was an easy call. It''s all about quantifying your risks and knowing what you really need. In my experience, any time you can make software-based replication do what you want, and you aren''t paying massive per-server software license fees, you''re probably better off with a larger number of cheaper systems vs. a smaller number of more expensive systems. Scott
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 17:12, Volker A. Brandt <vab at bb-c.de> wrote:>> The Samsung HD103UJ drives are nice, if you''re not using >> NVidia controllers - there''s a bug in either the drives or the >> controllers that makes them drop drives fairly frequently. > > Do you happen to have more details about this problem? Or some > pointers?We have 3 x2200m2 servers that we added pairs of these drives (specifically, the HD753UJ variant: 750GB instead of 1TB) to. We set up small (40G or so, I forget; we didn''t really need the space, but buying smaller disks wasn''t significantly cheaper) SVM mirrors on two of these machines, and a small SVM mirror plus a large zpool on the third. Within two weeks, all three machines had dropped a disk in some manner. The behavior we saw goes like this: metastat reports errors, output of ''format'' changes for the dropped disk but still shows the disk. If the disk is moved to another machine (a different chipset; i.e., with another controller) then it shows up fine, all data intact, everything hunky-dory. We didn''t lose data, but we did lose an SVM array and had to restore from backups. We replaced the drives with 4 Maxtors and 2 Seagate ES2s. None have reported problems yet. I don''t know of any other solution, if you don''t want to add a controller. It doesn''t appear to be a problem with the drives, or a problem with the chipset, but the combination of drive+chipset causes wonkiness. Google shows some users having problems with this under XP, so it''s probably not just a driver issue. This was what made me suspect the combination was a bad one, and further testing shows that that''s probably the case: the drives work on other controllers, and other drives work on these controllers. The drives themselves are still working fine; we moved them to a SCSI->sata jbod with a non-nV controller and they''re happy there. Will
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 8:43 PM, JZ <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> wrote:> ok, Scott, that sounded sincere. I am not going to do the pic thing on you. > > But do I have to spell this out to you -- somethings are invented not for > home use? > > Cindy, would you want to do ZFS at home, or just having some wine and > music? > > Can we focus on commercial usage? > please! > > >I dunno about you, but I need somewhere to store that music so I can stream it throughout the house while I''m drinking that wine ;) A single disk windows box isn''t really my cup-o-tea. Plus, I''m a geek, my vmware farm needs it''s nfs mounts on some solid, high performing gear. --Tim -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/attachments/20090108/11d50aa3/attachment.html>
But, Tim, you are a super IT guy, and your data is not baby...
I just have so many copies of my home baby data, since storage is so so cheap
today compared to the wine...
[and a baby JAVA thing to keep them in sync...]
(BTW, I am not a wine guy, I only do Remy+++)
;-)
best,
z
----- Original Message -----
From: Tim
To: JZ
Cc: Scott Laird ; Brandon High ; zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org ; Peter Korn
Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 4:35 PM
Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS?
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 8:43 PM, JZ <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com>
wrote:
ok, Scott, that sounded sincere. I am not going to do the pic thing on you.
But do I have to spell this out to you -- somethings are invented not for
home use?
Cindy, would you want to do ZFS at home, or just having some wine and music?
Can we focus on commercial usage?
please!
I dunno about you, but I need somewhere to store that music so I can stream it
throughout the house while I''m drinking that wine ;) A single disk
windows box isn''t really my cup-o-tea. Plus, I''m a geek, my
vmware farm needs it''s nfs mounts on some solid, high performing gear.
--Tim
-------------- next part --------------
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On 7-Jan-09, at 9:43 PM, JZ wrote:> ok, Scott, that sounded sincere. I am not going to do the pic thing > on you. > > But do I have to spell this out to you -- somethings are invented > not for > home use? > > Cindy, would you want to do ZFS at home,Why would you disrespect your personal data? ZFS is perfect for home use, for reasons that have been discussed on this list and elsewhere. Apple also recognises this, which is why ZFS is in OS X 10.5 and will presumably become the default boot filesystem. Sorry to wander a little offtopic, but IMHO - Apple needs to acknowledge, and tell their customers, that hard drives are unreliable consumables. I am desperately looking forward to the day when they recognise the need to ship all their systems with: 1) mirrored storage out of the box; 2) easy user-swappable drives; 3) foolproof fault notification and rectification. There is no reason why an Apple customer should not have this level of protection for her photo and video library, Great American Novel, or whatever. Time Machine is a good first step (though it doesn''t often work smoothly for me with a LaCie external FW drive). These are the neglected pieces, IMHO, of their touted Digital Lifestyle. --Toby> or just having some wine and music? > > Can we focus on commercial usage? > please! > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org> > To: "Brandon High" <bhigh at freaks.com> > Cc: <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <Peter.Korn at sun.com> > Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 9:28 PM > Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? > > >> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 4:53 PM, Brandon High <bhigh at freaks.com> >> wrote: >>> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 7:45 AM, Joel Buckley <Joel.Buckley at sun.com> >>> wrote: >>>> How much is your time worth? >>> >>> Quite a bit. >>> >>>> Consider the engineering effort going into every Sun Server. >>>> Any system from Sun is more than sufficient for a home server. >>>> You want more disks, then buy one with more slots. Done. >>> >>> A few years ago, I put together the NAS box currently in use at home >>> for $300 for 1TB of space. Mind you, I recycled the RAM from another >>> box and the four 250GB disks were free. I think 250 drives were >>> around >>> $200 at the time, so let''s say the system price was $1200. >>> >>> I don''t think there''s a Sun server that takes 4+ drives anywhere >>> near >>> $1200. The X4200 uses 2.5" drives, but costs $4255. Actually adding >>> more drives ups the cost further. That means the afternoon I spent >>> setting my server up was worth $3000. I should tell my boss that. >>> >>> A more reasonable comparison would be the Ultra 24. A system with >>> 4x250 drives is $1650. I could build a 4 TB system today for *less* >>> than my 1TB system of 2 years ago, so let''s use 3x750 + 1x250 >>> drives. >>> (That''s all the store will let me) and the price jumps to $2641. >>> >>> Assume that I buy the cheapest x64 system (the X2100 M2 at $1228) >>> and >>> add a drive tray because I want 4 drives ... well I can''t. The >>> cheapest drive tray is $7465. >>> >>> I have trouble justifying Sun hardware for many business >>> applications >>> that don''t require SPARC, let alone for the home. For custom systems >>> that most tinkerers would want at home, a shop like Silicon >>> Mechanics >>> (http://www.siliconmechanics.com/) (or even Dell or HP) is almost >>> always a better deal on hardware. >> >> I agree completely. About a year ago I spent around $800 (w/o >> drives) >> on a NAS box for home. I used a 4x PCI-X single-Xeon Supermicro >> MB, a >> giant case, and a single 8-port Supermicro SATA card. Then I dropped >> a pair of 80 GB boot drives and 9x 500 GB drives into it. With >> raidz2 >> plus a spare, that gives me around 2.7T of usable space. When I >> filled that up a few weeks back, I bought 2 more 8-port SATA cards, 2 >> Supermicro CSE-M35T-1B 5-drive hot-swap bays, and 9 1.5T drives, all >> for under $2k. That''s around $0.25/GB for the expansion and $0.36 >> overall, including last year''s expensive 500G drives. >> >> The closest that I can come to this config using current Sun hardware >> is probably the X4540 w/ 500G drives; that''s $35k for 14T of usable >> disk (5x 8-way raidz2 + 1 spare + 2 boot disks), $2.48/GB. It''s much >> nicer hardware but I don''t care. I''d also need an electrician >> (for 2x >> 240V circuits), a dedicated server room in my house (for the fan >> noise), and probably a divorce lawyer :-). >> >> Sun''s hardware really isn''t price-competitive on the low end, >> especially when commercial support offerings have no value to you. >> There''s nothing really wrong with this, as long as you understand >> that >> Sun''s really only going to be selling into shops where Sun''s support >> and extra engineering makes financial sense. In Sun''s defense, this >> is kind of an odd system, specially built for unusual requirements. >> >> My NAS box works well enough for me. It''s probably eaten ~20 >> hours of >> my time over the past year, partially because my Solaris is really >> rusty and partially because pkg has left me with broken, unbootable >> systems twice :-(. It''s hard to see how better hardware would have >> helped with that, though. >> >> >> Scott >> _______________________________________________ >> zfs-discuss mailing list >> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org >> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss > > _______________________________________________ > zfs-discuss mailing list > zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
I was think about Apple''s new SSD drive option on laptops... is that safer than Apple''s HD or less safe? [maybe Orvar can help me on this] the price is a bit hefty for me to just order for experiment... Thanks! z at home ----- Original Message ----- From: "Toby Thain" <toby at telegraphics.com.au> To: "JZ" <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> Cc: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org>; "Brandon High" <bhigh at freaks.com>; <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <Peter.Korn at sun.com> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 5:25 PM Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS?> > On 7-Jan-09, at 9:43 PM, JZ wrote: > >> ok, Scott, that sounded sincere. I am not going to do the pic thing on >> you. >> >> But do I have to spell this out to you -- somethings are invented not >> for >> home use? >> >> Cindy, would you want to do ZFS at home, > > Why would you disrespect your personal data? ZFS is perfect for home use, > for reasons that have been discussed on this list and elsewhere. > > Apple also recognises this, which is why ZFS is in OS X 10.5 and will > presumably become the default boot filesystem. > > Sorry to wander a little offtopic, but IMHO - Apple needs to acknowledge, > and tell their customers, that hard drives are unreliable consumables. > > I am desperately looking forward to the day when they recognise the need > to ship all their systems with: > 1) mirrored storage out of the box; > 2) easy user-swappable drives; > 3) foolproof fault notification and rectification. > > There is no reason why an Apple customer should not have this level of > protection for her photo and video library, Great American Novel, or > whatever. Time Machine is a good first step (though it doesn''t often work > smoothly for me with a LaCie external FW drive). > > These are the neglected pieces, IMHO, of their touted Digital Lifestyle. > > --Toby > > >> or just having some wine and music? >> >> Can we focus on commercial usage? >> please! >> >> >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org> >> To: "Brandon High" <bhigh at freaks.com> >> Cc: <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <Peter.Korn at sun.com> >> Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 9:28 PM >> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? >> >> >>> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 4:53 PM, Brandon High <bhigh at freaks.com> wrote: >>>> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 7:45 AM, Joel Buckley <Joel.Buckley at sun.com> >>>> wrote: >>>>> How much is your time worth? >>>> >>>> Quite a bit. >>>> >>>>> Consider the engineering effort going into every Sun Server. >>>>> Any system from Sun is more than sufficient for a home server. >>>>> You want more disks, then buy one with more slots. Done. >>>> >>>> A few years ago, I put together the NAS box currently in use at home >>>> for $300 for 1TB of space. Mind you, I recycled the RAM from another >>>> box and the four 250GB disks were free. I think 250 drives were around >>>> $200 at the time, so let''s say the system price was $1200. >>>> >>>> I don''t think there''s a Sun server that takes 4+ drives anywhere near >>>> $1200. The X4200 uses 2.5" drives, but costs $4255. Actually adding >>>> more drives ups the cost further. That means the afternoon I spent >>>> setting my server up was worth $3000. I should tell my boss that. >>>> >>>> A more reasonable comparison would be the Ultra 24. A system with >>>> 4x250 drives is $1650. I could build a 4 TB system today for *less* >>>> than my 1TB system of 2 years ago, so let''s use 3x750 + 1x250 drives. >>>> (That''s all the store will let me) and the price jumps to $2641. >>>> >>>> Assume that I buy the cheapest x64 system (the X2100 M2 at $1228) and >>>> add a drive tray because I want 4 drives ... well I can''t. The >>>> cheapest drive tray is $7465. >>>> >>>> I have trouble justifying Sun hardware for many business applications >>>> that don''t require SPARC, let alone for the home. For custom systems >>>> that most tinkerers would want at home, a shop like Silicon Mechanics >>>> (http://www.siliconmechanics.com/) (or even Dell or HP) is almost >>>> always a better deal on hardware. >>> >>> I agree completely. About a year ago I spent around $800 (w/o drives) >>> on a NAS box for home. I used a 4x PCI-X single-Xeon Supermicro MB, a >>> giant case, and a single 8-port Supermicro SATA card. Then I dropped >>> a pair of 80 GB boot drives and 9x 500 GB drives into it. With raidz2 >>> plus a spare, that gives me around 2.7T of usable space. When I >>> filled that up a few weeks back, I bought 2 more 8-port SATA cards, 2 >>> Supermicro CSE-M35T-1B 5-drive hot-swap bays, and 9 1.5T drives, all >>> for under $2k. That''s around $0.25/GB for the expansion and $0.36 >>> overall, including last year''s expensive 500G drives. >>> >>> The closest that I can come to this config using current Sun hardware >>> is probably the X4540 w/ 500G drives; that''s $35k for 14T of usable >>> disk (5x 8-way raidz2 + 1 spare + 2 boot disks), $2.48/GB. It''s much >>> nicer hardware but I don''t care. I''d also need an electrician (for 2x >>> 240V circuits), a dedicated server room in my house (for the fan >>> noise), and probably a divorce lawyer :-). >>> >>> Sun''s hardware really isn''t price-competitive on the low end, >>> especially when commercial support offerings have no value to you. >>> There''s nothing really wrong with this, as long as you understand that >>> Sun''s really only going to be selling into shops where Sun''s support >>> and extra engineering makes financial sense. In Sun''s defense, this >>> is kind of an odd system, specially built for unusual requirements. >>> >>> My NAS box works well enough for me. It''s probably eaten ~20 hours of >>> my time over the past year, partially because my Solaris is really >>> rusty and partially because pkg has left me with broken, unbootable >>> systems twice :-(. It''s hard to see how better hardware would have >>> helped with that, though. >>> >>> >>> Scott >>> _______________________________________________ >>> zfs-discuss mailing list >>> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org >>> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >> >> _______________________________________________ >> zfs-discuss mailing list >> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org >> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >
Today? Low-power SSDs are probably less reliable than low-power hard drives, although they''re too new to really know for certain. Given the number of problems that vendors have had getting acceptable write speeds, I''d be really amazed if they''ve done any real work on long-term reliability yet. Going forward, SSDs will almost certainly be more reliable, as long as you have something SMART-ish watching the number of worn-out SSD cells and recommending preemptive replacement of worn-out drives every few years. That should be a slow, predictable process, unlike most HD failures. Scott On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 2:30 PM, JZ <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> wrote:> I was think about Apple''s new SSD drive option on laptops... > > is that safer than Apple''s HD or less safe? [maybe Orvar can help me on > this] > > the price is a bit hefty for me to just order for experiment... > Thanks! > z at home > > > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Toby Thain" <toby at telegraphics.com.au> > To: "JZ" <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> > Cc: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org>; "Brandon High" <bhigh at freaks.com>; > <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <Peter.Korn at sun.com> > Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 5:25 PM > Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? > > >> >> On 7-Jan-09, at 9:43 PM, JZ wrote: >> >>> ok, Scott, that sounded sincere. I am not going to do the pic thing on >>> you. >>> >>> But do I have to spell this out to you -- somethings are invented not >>> for >>> home use? >>> >>> Cindy, would you want to do ZFS at home, >> >> Why would you disrespect your personal data? ZFS is perfect for home use, >> for reasons that have been discussed on this list and elsewhere. >> >> Apple also recognises this, which is why ZFS is in OS X 10.5 and will >> presumably become the default boot filesystem. >> >> Sorry to wander a little offtopic, but IMHO - Apple needs to acknowledge, >> and tell their customers, that hard drives are unreliable consumables. >> >> I am desperately looking forward to the day when they recognise the need >> to ship all their systems with: >> 1) mirrored storage out of the box; >> 2) easy user-swappable drives; >> 3) foolproof fault notification and rectification. >> >> There is no reason why an Apple customer should not have this level of >> protection for her photo and video library, Great American Novel, or >> whatever. Time Machine is a good first step (though it doesn''t often work >> smoothly for me with a LaCie external FW drive). >> >> These are the neglected pieces, IMHO, of their touted Digital Lifestyle. >> >> --Toby >> >> >>> or just having some wine and music? >>> >>> Can we focus on commercial usage? >>> please! >>> >>> >>> >>> ----- Original Message ----- >>> From: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org> >>> To: "Brandon High" <bhigh at freaks.com> >>> Cc: <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <Peter.Korn at sun.com> >>> Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 9:28 PM >>> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? >>> >>> >>>> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 4:53 PM, Brandon High <bhigh at freaks.com> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 7:45 AM, Joel Buckley <Joel.Buckley at sun.com> >>>>> wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> How much is your time worth? >>>>> >>>>> Quite a bit. >>>>> >>>>>> Consider the engineering effort going into every Sun Server. >>>>>> Any system from Sun is more than sufficient for a home server. >>>>>> You want more disks, then buy one with more slots. Done. >>>>> >>>>> A few years ago, I put together the NAS box currently in use at home >>>>> for $300 for 1TB of space. Mind you, I recycled the RAM from another >>>>> box and the four 250GB disks were free. I think 250 drives were around >>>>> $200 at the time, so let''s say the system price was $1200. >>>>> >>>>> I don''t think there''s a Sun server that takes 4+ drives anywhere near >>>>> $1200. The X4200 uses 2.5" drives, but costs $4255. Actually adding >>>>> more drives ups the cost further. That means the afternoon I spent >>>>> setting my server up was worth $3000. I should tell my boss that. >>>>> >>>>> A more reasonable comparison would be the Ultra 24. A system with >>>>> 4x250 drives is $1650. I could build a 4 TB system today for *less* >>>>> than my 1TB system of 2 years ago, so let''s use 3x750 + 1x250 drives. >>>>> (That''s all the store will let me) and the price jumps to $2641. >>>>> >>>>> Assume that I buy the cheapest x64 system (the X2100 M2 at $1228) and >>>>> add a drive tray because I want 4 drives ... well I can''t. The >>>>> cheapest drive tray is $7465. >>>>> >>>>> I have trouble justifying Sun hardware for many business applications >>>>> that don''t require SPARC, let alone for the home. For custom systems >>>>> that most tinkerers would want at home, a shop like Silicon Mechanics >>>>> (http://www.siliconmechanics.com/) (or even Dell or HP) is almost >>>>> always a better deal on hardware. >>>> >>>> I agree completely. About a year ago I spent around $800 (w/o drives) >>>> on a NAS box for home. I used a 4x PCI-X single-Xeon Supermicro MB, a >>>> giant case, and a single 8-port Supermicro SATA card. Then I dropped >>>> a pair of 80 GB boot drives and 9x 500 GB drives into it. With raidz2 >>>> plus a spare, that gives me around 2.7T of usable space. When I >>>> filled that up a few weeks back, I bought 2 more 8-port SATA cards, 2 >>>> Supermicro CSE-M35T-1B 5-drive hot-swap bays, and 9 1.5T drives, all >>>> for under $2k. That''s around $0.25/GB for the expansion and $0.36 >>>> overall, including last year''s expensive 500G drives. >>>> >>>> The closest that I can come to this config using current Sun hardware >>>> is probably the X4540 w/ 500G drives; that''s $35k for 14T of usable >>>> disk (5x 8-way raidz2 + 1 spare + 2 boot disks), $2.48/GB. It''s much >>>> nicer hardware but I don''t care. I''d also need an electrician (for 2x >>>> 240V circuits), a dedicated server room in my house (for the fan >>>> noise), and probably a divorce lawyer :-). >>>> >>>> Sun''s hardware really isn''t price-competitive on the low end, >>>> especially when commercial support offerings have no value to you. >>>> There''s nothing really wrong with this, as long as you understand that >>>> Sun''s really only going to be selling into shops where Sun''s support >>>> and extra engineering makes financial sense. In Sun''s defense, this >>>> is kind of an odd system, specially built for unusual requirements. >>>> >>>> My NAS box works well enough for me. It''s probably eaten ~20 hours of >>>> my time over the past year, partially because my Solaris is really >>>> rusty and partially because pkg has left me with broken, unbootable >>>> systems twice :-(. It''s hard to see how better hardware would have >>>> helped with that, though. >>>> >>>> >>>> Scott >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> zfs-discuss mailing list >>>> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org >>>> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> zfs-discuss mailing list >>> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org >>> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >> > >
Thanks Scott, I was really itchy to order one, now I just want to save that open $ for Remy+++. Then, next question, can I trust any HD for my home laptop? should I go get a Sony VAIO or a cheap China-made thing would do? big price delta... z at home ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org> To: "JZ" <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> Cc: "Toby Thain" <toby at telegraphics.com.au>; "Brandon High" <bhigh at freaks.com>; <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <Peter.Korn at sun.com>; "Orvar Korvar" <knatte_fnatte_tjatte at yahoo.com> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 5:36 PM Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS?> Today? Low-power SSDs are probably less reliable than low-power hard > drives, although they''re too new to really know for certain. Given > the number of problems that vendors have had getting acceptable write > speeds, I''d be really amazed if they''ve done any real work on > long-term reliability yet. Going forward, SSDs will almost certainly > be more reliable, as long as you have something SMART-ish watching the > number of worn-out SSD cells and recommending preemptive replacement > of worn-out drives every few years. That should be a slow, > predictable process, unlike most HD failures. > > > Scott > > On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 2:30 PM, JZ <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> wrote: >> I was think about Apple''s new SSD drive option on laptops... >> >> is that safer than Apple''s HD or less safe? [maybe Orvar can help me on >> this] >> >> the price is a bit hefty for me to just order for experiment... >> Thanks! >> z at home >> >> >> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Toby Thain" >> <toby at telegraphics.com.au> >> To: "JZ" <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> >> Cc: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org>; "Brandon High" <bhigh at freaks.com>; >> <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <Peter.Korn at sun.com> >> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 5:25 PM >> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? >> >> >>> >>> On 7-Jan-09, at 9:43 PM, JZ wrote: >>> >>>> ok, Scott, that sounded sincere. I am not going to do the pic thing on >>>> you. >>>> >>>> But do I have to spell this out to you -- somethings are invented not >>>> for >>>> home use? >>>> >>>> Cindy, would you want to do ZFS at home, >>> >>> Why would you disrespect your personal data? ZFS is perfect for home >>> use, >>> for reasons that have been discussed on this list and elsewhere. >>> >>> Apple also recognises this, which is why ZFS is in OS X 10.5 and will >>> presumably become the default boot filesystem. >>> >>> Sorry to wander a little offtopic, but IMHO - Apple needs to >>> acknowledge, >>> and tell their customers, that hard drives are unreliable consumables. >>> >>> I am desperately looking forward to the day when they recognise the >>> need >>> to ship all their systems with: >>> 1) mirrored storage out of the box; >>> 2) easy user-swappable drives; >>> 3) foolproof fault notification and rectification. >>> >>> There is no reason why an Apple customer should not have this level of >>> protection for her photo and video library, Great American Novel, or >>> whatever. Time Machine is a good first step (though it doesn''t often >>> work >>> smoothly for me with a LaCie external FW drive). >>> >>> These are the neglected pieces, IMHO, of their touted Digital Lifestyle. >>> >>> --Toby >>> >>> >>>> or just having some wine and music? >>>> >>>> Can we focus on commercial usage? >>>> please! >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> ----- Original Message ----- >>>> From: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org> >>>> To: "Brandon High" <bhigh at freaks.com> >>>> Cc: <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <Peter.Korn at sun.com> >>>> Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 9:28 PM >>>> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? >>>> >>>> >>>>> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 4:53 PM, Brandon High <bhigh at freaks.com> >>>>> wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 7:45 AM, Joel Buckley <Joel.Buckley at sun.com> >>>>>> wrote: >>>>>>> >>>>>>> How much is your time worth? >>>>>> >>>>>> Quite a bit. >>>>>> >>>>>>> Consider the engineering effort going into every Sun Server. >>>>>>> Any system from Sun is more than sufficient for a home server. >>>>>>> You want more disks, then buy one with more slots. Done. >>>>>> >>>>>> A few years ago, I put together the NAS box currently in use at home >>>>>> for $300 for 1TB of space. Mind you, I recycled the RAM from another >>>>>> box and the four 250GB disks were free. I think 250 drives were >>>>>> around >>>>>> $200 at the time, so let''s say the system price was $1200. >>>>>> >>>>>> I don''t think there''s a Sun server that takes 4+ drives anywhere >>>>>> near >>>>>> $1200. The X4200 uses 2.5" drives, but costs $4255. Actually adding >>>>>> more drives ups the cost further. That means the afternoon I spent >>>>>> setting my server up was worth $3000. I should tell my boss that. >>>>>> >>>>>> A more reasonable comparison would be the Ultra 24. A system with >>>>>> 4x250 drives is $1650. I could build a 4 TB system today for *less* >>>>>> than my 1TB system of 2 years ago, so let''s use 3x750 + 1x250 >>>>>> drives. >>>>>> (That''s all the store will let me) and the price jumps to $2641. >>>>>> >>>>>> Assume that I buy the cheapest x64 system (the X2100 M2 at $1228) >>>>>> and >>>>>> add a drive tray because I want 4 drives ... well I can''t. The >>>>>> cheapest drive tray is $7465. >>>>>> >>>>>> I have trouble justifying Sun hardware for many business >>>>>> applications >>>>>> that don''t require SPARC, let alone for the home. For custom systems >>>>>> that most tinkerers would want at home, a shop like Silicon >>>>>> Mechanics >>>>>> (http://www.siliconmechanics.com/) (or even Dell or HP) is almost >>>>>> always a better deal on hardware. >>>>> >>>>> I agree completely. About a year ago I spent around $800 (w/o >>>>> drives) >>>>> on a NAS box for home. I used a 4x PCI-X single-Xeon Supermicro MB, >>>>> a >>>>> giant case, and a single 8-port Supermicro SATA card. Then I dropped >>>>> a pair of 80 GB boot drives and 9x 500 GB drives into it. With >>>>> raidz2 >>>>> plus a spare, that gives me around 2.7T of usable space. When I >>>>> filled that up a few weeks back, I bought 2 more 8-port SATA cards, 2 >>>>> Supermicro CSE-M35T-1B 5-drive hot-swap bays, and 9 1.5T drives, all >>>>> for under $2k. That''s around $0.25/GB for the expansion and $0.36 >>>>> overall, including last year''s expensive 500G drives. >>>>> >>>>> The closest that I can come to this config using current Sun hardware >>>>> is probably the X4540 w/ 500G drives; that''s $35k for 14T of usable >>>>> disk (5x 8-way raidz2 + 1 spare + 2 boot disks), $2.48/GB. It''s much >>>>> nicer hardware but I don''t care. I''d also need an electrician (for >>>>> 2x >>>>> 240V circuits), a dedicated server room in my house (for the fan >>>>> noise), and probably a divorce lawyer :-). >>>>> >>>>> Sun''s hardware really isn''t price-competitive on the low end, >>>>> especially when commercial support offerings have no value to you. >>>>> There''s nothing really wrong with this, as long as you understand >>>>> that >>>>> Sun''s really only going to be selling into shops where Sun''s support >>>>> and extra engineering makes financial sense. In Sun''s defense, this >>>>> is kind of an odd system, specially built for unusual requirements. >>>>> >>>>> My NAS box works well enough for me. It''s probably eaten ~20 hours >>>>> of >>>>> my time over the past year, partially because my Solaris is really >>>>> rusty and partially because pkg has left me with broken, unbootable >>>>> systems twice :-(. It''s hard to see how better hardware would have >>>>> helped with that, though. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Scott >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> zfs-discuss mailing list >>>>> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org >>>>> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> zfs-discuss mailing list >>>> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org >>>> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >>> >> >>
Scott?? I am really at a major cross-point in my decision making process -- until today, all my home stuff are Sony, from TV, projector, stereo bricks, all the way to USB SSD sticks. [besides speakers I use Bose] but this laptop thing is really bothering my religious love for Sony. should I or should I not... OMG! ???! z, at home don''t know how to spend $ ----- Original Message ----- From: "JZ" <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> To: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org> Cc: "Orvar Korvar" <knatte_fnatte_tjatte at yahoo.com>; <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <Peter.Korn at sun.com> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 5:40 PM Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS?> Thanks Scott, > I was really itchy to order one, now I just want to save that open $ for > Remy+++. > > Then, next question, can I trust any HD for my home laptop? should I go > get > a Sony VAIO or a cheap China-made thing would do? > big price delta... > > z at home > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org> > To: "JZ" <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> > Cc: "Toby Thain" <toby at telegraphics.com.au>; "Brandon High" > <bhigh at freaks.com>; <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" > <Peter.Korn at sun.com>; "Orvar Korvar" <knatte_fnatte_tjatte at yahoo.com> > Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 5:36 PM > Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? > > >> Today? Low-power SSDs are probably less reliable than low-power hard >> drives, although they''re too new to really know for certain. Given >> the number of problems that vendors have had getting acceptable write >> speeds, I''d be really amazed if they''ve done any real work on >> long-term reliability yet. Going forward, SSDs will almost certainly >> be more reliable, as long as you have something SMART-ish watching the >> number of worn-out SSD cells and recommending preemptive replacement >> of worn-out drives every few years. That should be a slow, >> predictable process, unlike most HD failures. >> >> >> Scott >> >> On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 2:30 PM, JZ <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> wrote: >>> I was think about Apple''s new SSD drive option on laptops... >>> >>> is that safer than Apple''s HD or less safe? [maybe Orvar can help me on >>> this] >>> >>> the price is a bit hefty for me to just order for experiment... >>> Thanks! >>> z at home >>> >>> >>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Toby Thain" >>> <toby at telegraphics.com.au> >>> To: "JZ" <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> >>> Cc: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org>; "Brandon High" >>> <bhigh at freaks.com>; >>> <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <Peter.Korn at sun.com> >>> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 5:25 PM >>> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? >>> >>> >>>> >>>> On 7-Jan-09, at 9:43 PM, JZ wrote: >>>> >>>>> ok, Scott, that sounded sincere. I am not going to do the pic thing >>>>> on >>>>> you. >>>>> >>>>> But do I have to spell this out to you -- somethings are invented not >>>>> for >>>>> home use? >>>>> >>>>> Cindy, would you want to do ZFS at home, >>>> >>>> Why would you disrespect your personal data? ZFS is perfect for home >>>> use, >>>> for reasons that have been discussed on this list and elsewhere. >>>> >>>> Apple also recognises this, which is why ZFS is in OS X 10.5 and will >>>> presumably become the default boot filesystem. >>>> >>>> Sorry to wander a little offtopic, but IMHO - Apple needs to >>>> acknowledge, >>>> and tell their customers, that hard drives are unreliable consumables. >>>> >>>> I am desperately looking forward to the day when they recognise the >>>> need >>>> to ship all their systems with: >>>> 1) mirrored storage out of the box; >>>> 2) easy user-swappable drives; >>>> 3) foolproof fault notification and rectification. >>>> >>>> There is no reason why an Apple customer should not have this level of >>>> protection for her photo and video library, Great American Novel, or >>>> whatever. Time Machine is a good first step (though it doesn''t often >>>> work >>>> smoothly for me with a LaCie external FW drive). >>>> >>>> These are the neglected pieces, IMHO, of their touted Digital >>>> Lifestyle. >>>> >>>> --Toby >>>> >>>> >>>>> or just having some wine and music? >>>>> >>>>> Can we focus on commercial usage? >>>>> please! >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> ----- Original Message ----- >>>>> From: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org> >>>>> To: "Brandon High" <bhigh at freaks.com> >>>>> Cc: <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <Peter.Korn at sun.com> >>>>> Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 9:28 PM >>>>> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 4:53 PM, Brandon High <bhigh at freaks.com> >>>>>> wrote: >>>>>>> >>>>>>> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 7:45 AM, Joel Buckley <Joel.Buckley at sun.com> >>>>>>> wrote: >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> How much is your time worth? >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Quite a bit. >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Consider the engineering effort going into every Sun Server. >>>>>>>> Any system from Sun is more than sufficient for a home server. >>>>>>>> You want more disks, then buy one with more slots. Done. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> A few years ago, I put together the NAS box currently in use at home >>>>>>> for $300 for 1TB of space. Mind you, I recycled the RAM from another >>>>>>> box and the four 250GB disks were free. I think 250 drives were >>>>>>> around >>>>>>> $200 at the time, so let''s say the system price was $1200. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> I don''t think there''s a Sun server that takes 4+ drives anywhere >>>>>>> near >>>>>>> $1200. The X4200 uses 2.5" drives, but costs $4255. Actually adding >>>>>>> more drives ups the cost further. That means the afternoon I spent >>>>>>> setting my server up was worth $3000. I should tell my boss that. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> A more reasonable comparison would be the Ultra 24. A system with >>>>>>> 4x250 drives is $1650. I could build a 4 TB system today for *less* >>>>>>> than my 1TB system of 2 years ago, so let''s use 3x750 + 1x250 >>>>>>> drives. >>>>>>> (That''s all the store will let me) and the price jumps to $2641. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Assume that I buy the cheapest x64 system (the X2100 M2 at $1228) >>>>>>> and >>>>>>> add a drive tray because I want 4 drives ... well I can''t. The >>>>>>> cheapest drive tray is $7465. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> I have trouble justifying Sun hardware for many business >>>>>>> applications >>>>>>> that don''t require SPARC, let alone for the home. For custom systems >>>>>>> that most tinkerers would want at home, a shop like Silicon >>>>>>> Mechanics >>>>>>> (http://www.siliconmechanics.com/) (or even Dell or HP) is almost >>>>>>> always a better deal on hardware. >>>>>> >>>>>> I agree completely. About a year ago I spent around $800 (w/o >>>>>> drives) >>>>>> on a NAS box for home. I used a 4x PCI-X single-Xeon Supermicro MB, >>>>>> a >>>>>> giant case, and a single 8-port Supermicro SATA card. Then I dropped >>>>>> a pair of 80 GB boot drives and 9x 500 GB drives into it. With >>>>>> raidz2 >>>>>> plus a spare, that gives me around 2.7T of usable space. When I >>>>>> filled that up a few weeks back, I bought 2 more 8-port SATA cards, 2 >>>>>> Supermicro CSE-M35T-1B 5-drive hot-swap bays, and 9 1.5T drives, all >>>>>> for under $2k. That''s around $0.25/GB for the expansion and $0.36 >>>>>> overall, including last year''s expensive 500G drives. >>>>>> >>>>>> The closest that I can come to this config using current Sun hardware >>>>>> is probably the X4540 w/ 500G drives; that''s $35k for 14T of usable >>>>>> disk (5x 8-way raidz2 + 1 spare + 2 boot disks), $2.48/GB. It''s much >>>>>> nicer hardware but I don''t care. I''d also need an electrician (for >>>>>> 2x >>>>>> 240V circuits), a dedicated server room in my house (for the fan >>>>>> noise), and probably a divorce lawyer :-). >>>>>> >>>>>> Sun''s hardware really isn''t price-competitive on the low end, >>>>>> especially when commercial support offerings have no value to you. >>>>>> There''s nothing really wrong with this, as long as you understand >>>>>> that >>>>>> Sun''s really only going to be selling into shops where Sun''s support >>>>>> and extra engineering makes financial sense. In Sun''s defense, this >>>>>> is kind of an odd system, specially built for unusual requirements. >>>>>> >>>>>> My NAS box works well enough for me. It''s probably eaten ~20 hours >>>>>> of >>>>>> my time over the past year, partially because my Solaris is really >>>>>> rusty and partially because pkg has left me with broken, unbootable >>>>>> systems twice :-(. It''s hard to see how better hardware would have >>>>>> helped with that, though. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Scott >>>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>>> zfs-discuss mailing list >>>>>> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org >>>>>> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >>>>> >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> zfs-discuss mailing list >>>>> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org >>>>> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >>>> >>> >>> > > _______________________________________________ > zfs-discuss mailing list > zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
You can''t trust any hard drive. That''s what backups are for :-). Laptop hard drives aren''t much worse than desktop drives, and 2.5" SATA drives are cheap. As long as they''re easy to swap, then a drive failure isn''t the end of the world. Order a new drive ($100 or so), swap them, and restore from backup. I haven''t dealt with PC laptops in years, so I can''t really compare models. Scott On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 2:40 PM, JZ <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> wrote:> Thanks Scott, > I was really itchy to order one, now I just want to save that open $ for > Remy+++. > > Then, next question, can I trust any HD for my home laptop? should I go get > a Sony VAIO or a cheap China-made thing would do? > big price delta... > > z at home > > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org> > To: "JZ" <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> > Cc: "Toby Thain" <toby at telegraphics.com.au>; "Brandon High" > <bhigh at freaks.com>; <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" > <Peter.Korn at sun.com>; "Orvar Korvar" <knatte_fnatte_tjatte at yahoo.com> > Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 5:36 PM > Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? > > >> Today? Low-power SSDs are probably less reliable than low-power hard >> drives, although they''re too new to really know for certain. Given >> the number of problems that vendors have had getting acceptable write >> speeds, I''d be really amazed if they''ve done any real work on >> long-term reliability yet. Going forward, SSDs will almost certainly >> be more reliable, as long as you have something SMART-ish watching the >> number of worn-out SSD cells and recommending preemptive replacement >> of worn-out drives every few years. That should be a slow, >> predictable process, unlike most HD failures. >> >> >> Scott >> >> On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 2:30 PM, JZ <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> wrote: >>> >>> I was think about Apple''s new SSD drive option on laptops... >>> >>> is that safer than Apple''s HD or less safe? [maybe Orvar can help me on >>> this] >>> >>> the price is a bit hefty for me to just order for experiment... >>> Thanks! >>> z at home >>> >>> >>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Toby Thain" >>> <toby at telegraphics.com.au> >>> To: "JZ" <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> >>> Cc: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org>; "Brandon High" <bhigh at freaks.com>; >>> <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <Peter.Korn at sun.com> >>> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 5:25 PM >>> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? >>> >>> >>>> >>>> On 7-Jan-09, at 9:43 PM, JZ wrote: >>>> >>>>> ok, Scott, that sounded sincere. I am not going to do the pic thing on >>>>> you. >>>>> >>>>> But do I have to spell this out to you -- somethings are invented not >>>>> for >>>>> home use? >>>>> >>>>> Cindy, would you want to do ZFS at home, >>>> >>>> Why would you disrespect your personal data? ZFS is perfect for home >>>> use, >>>> for reasons that have been discussed on this list and elsewhere. >>>> >>>> Apple also recognises this, which is why ZFS is in OS X 10.5 and will >>>> presumably become the default boot filesystem. >>>> >>>> Sorry to wander a little offtopic, but IMHO - Apple needs to >>>> acknowledge, >>>> and tell their customers, that hard drives are unreliable consumables. >>>> >>>> I am desperately looking forward to the day when they recognise the need >>>> to ship all their systems with: >>>> 1) mirrored storage out of the box; >>>> 2) easy user-swappable drives; >>>> 3) foolproof fault notification and rectification. >>>> >>>> There is no reason why an Apple customer should not have this level of >>>> protection for her photo and video library, Great American Novel, or >>>> whatever. Time Machine is a good first step (though it doesn''t often >>>> work >>>> smoothly for me with a LaCie external FW drive). >>>> >>>> These are the neglected pieces, IMHO, of their touted Digital Lifestyle. >>>> >>>> --Toby >>>> >>>> >>>>> or just having some wine and music? >>>>> >>>>> Can we focus on commercial usage? >>>>> please! >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> ----- Original Message ----- >>>>> From: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org> >>>>> To: "Brandon High" <bhigh at freaks.com> >>>>> Cc: <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <Peter.Korn at sun.com> >>>>> Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 9:28 PM >>>>> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 4:53 PM, Brandon High <bhigh at freaks.com> wrote: >>>>>>> >>>>>>> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 7:45 AM, Joel Buckley <Joel.Buckley at sun.com> >>>>>>> wrote: >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> How much is your time worth? >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Quite a bit. >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Consider the engineering effort going into every Sun Server. >>>>>>>> Any system from Sun is more than sufficient for a home server. >>>>>>>> You want more disks, then buy one with more slots. Done. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> A few years ago, I put together the NAS box currently in use at home >>>>>>> for $300 for 1TB of space. Mind you, I recycled the RAM from another >>>>>>> box and the four 250GB disks were free. I think 250 drives were >>>>>>> around >>>>>>> $200 at the time, so let''s say the system price was $1200. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> I don''t think there''s a Sun server that takes 4+ drives anywhere near >>>>>>> $1200. The X4200 uses 2.5" drives, but costs $4255. Actually adding >>>>>>> more drives ups the cost further. That means the afternoon I spent >>>>>>> setting my server up was worth $3000. I should tell my boss that. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> A more reasonable comparison would be the Ultra 24. A system with >>>>>>> 4x250 drives is $1650. I could build a 4 TB system today for *less* >>>>>>> than my 1TB system of 2 years ago, so let''s use 3x750 + 1x250 drives. >>>>>>> (That''s all the store will let me) and the price jumps to $2641. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Assume that I buy the cheapest x64 system (the X2100 M2 at $1228) and >>>>>>> add a drive tray because I want 4 drives ... well I can''t. The >>>>>>> cheapest drive tray is $7465. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> I have trouble justifying Sun hardware for many business applications >>>>>>> that don''t require SPARC, let alone for the home. For custom systems >>>>>>> that most tinkerers would want at home, a shop like Silicon Mechanics >>>>>>> (http://www.siliconmechanics.com/) (or even Dell or HP) is almost >>>>>>> always a better deal on hardware. >>>>>> >>>>>> I agree completely. About a year ago I spent around $800 (w/o drives) >>>>>> on a NAS box for home. I used a 4x PCI-X single-Xeon Supermicro MB, >>>>>> a >>>>>> giant case, and a single 8-port Supermicro SATA card. Then I dropped >>>>>> a pair of 80 GB boot drives and 9x 500 GB drives into it. With raidz2 >>>>>> plus a spare, that gives me around 2.7T of usable space. When I >>>>>> filled that up a few weeks back, I bought 2 more 8-port SATA cards, 2 >>>>>> Supermicro CSE-M35T-1B 5-drive hot-swap bays, and 9 1.5T drives, all >>>>>> for under $2k. That''s around $0.25/GB for the expansion and $0.36 >>>>>> overall, including last year''s expensive 500G drives. >>>>>> >>>>>> The closest that I can come to this config using current Sun hardware >>>>>> is probably the X4540 w/ 500G drives; that''s $35k for 14T of usable >>>>>> disk (5x 8-way raidz2 + 1 spare + 2 boot disks), $2.48/GB. It''s much >>>>>> nicer hardware but I don''t care. I''d also need an electrician (for >>>>>> 2x >>>>>> 240V circuits), a dedicated server room in my house (for the fan >>>>>> noise), and probably a divorce lawyer :-). >>>>>> >>>>>> Sun''s hardware really isn''t price-competitive on the low end, >>>>>> especially when commercial support offerings have no value to you. >>>>>> There''s nothing really wrong with this, as long as you understand that >>>>>> Sun''s really only going to be selling into shops where Sun''s support >>>>>> and extra engineering makes financial sense. In Sun''s defense, this >>>>>> is kind of an odd system, specially built for unusual requirements. >>>>>> >>>>>> My NAS box works well enough for me. It''s probably eaten ~20 hours >>>>>> of >>>>>> my time over the past year, partially because my Solaris is really >>>>>> rusty and partially because pkg has left me with broken, unbootable >>>>>> systems twice :-(. It''s hard to see how better hardware would have >>>>>> helped with that, though. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Scott >>>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>>> zfs-discuss mailing list >>>>>> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org >>>>>> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >>>>> >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> zfs-discuss mailing list >>>>> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org >>>>> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >>>> >>> >>> > >
Thanks much Scott, I still don''t know what you are talking about -- my $3000 to $800 laptops all never needed to swap any drive. But yeah, I got hit on all of them when I was in china, by the china web virus that no U.S. software could do anything [then a china open source thing did the job] So, without the swapping HD concern, what should I do??? z at home still confused ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org> To: "JZ" <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> Cc: "Toby Thain" <toby at telegraphics.com.au>; "Brandon High" <bhigh at freaks.com>; <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <Peter.Korn at sun.com>; "Orvar Korvar" <knatte_fnatte_tjatte at yahoo.com> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 6:20 PM Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS?> You can''t trust any hard drive. That''s what backups are for :-). > > Laptop hard drives aren''t much worse than desktop drives, and 2.5" > SATA drives are cheap. As long as they''re easy to swap, then a drive > failure isn''t the end of the world. Order a new drive ($100 or so), > swap them, and restore from backup. > > I haven''t dealt with PC laptops in years, so I can''t really compare > models. > > > Scott > > On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 2:40 PM, JZ <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> wrote: >> Thanks Scott, >> I was really itchy to order one, now I just want to save that open $ for >> Remy+++. >> >> Then, next question, can I trust any HD for my home laptop? should I go >> get >> a Sony VAIO or a cheap China-made thing would do? >> big price delta... >> >> z at home >> >> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org> >> To: "JZ" <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> >> Cc: "Toby Thain" <toby at telegraphics.com.au>; "Brandon High" >> <bhigh at freaks.com>; <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" >> <Peter.Korn at sun.com>; "Orvar Korvar" <knatte_fnatte_tjatte at yahoo.com> >> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 5:36 PM >> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? >> >> >>> Today? Low-power SSDs are probably less reliable than low-power hard >>> drives, although they''re too new to really know for certain. Given >>> the number of problems that vendors have had getting acceptable write >>> speeds, I''d be really amazed if they''ve done any real work on >>> long-term reliability yet. Going forward, SSDs will almost certainly >>> be more reliable, as long as you have something SMART-ish watching the >>> number of worn-out SSD cells and recommending preemptive replacement >>> of worn-out drives every few years. That should be a slow, >>> predictable process, unlike most HD failures. >>> >>> >>> Scott >>> >>> On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 2:30 PM, JZ <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> wrote: >>>> >>>> I was think about Apple''s new SSD drive option on laptops... >>>> >>>> is that safer than Apple''s HD or less safe? [maybe Orvar can help me on >>>> this] >>>> >>>> the price is a bit hefty for me to just order for experiment... >>>> Thanks! >>>> z at home >>>> >>>> >>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Toby Thain" >>>> <toby at telegraphics.com.au> >>>> To: "JZ" <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> >>>> Cc: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org>; "Brandon High" >>>> <bhigh at freaks.com>; >>>> <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <Peter.Korn at sun.com> >>>> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 5:25 PM >>>> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? >>>> >>>> >>>>> >>>>> On 7-Jan-09, at 9:43 PM, JZ wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> ok, Scott, that sounded sincere. I am not going to do the pic thing >>>>>> on >>>>>> you. >>>>>> >>>>>> But do I have to spell this out to you -- somethings are invented >>>>>> not >>>>>> for >>>>>> home use? >>>>>> >>>>>> Cindy, would you want to do ZFS at home, >>>>> >>>>> Why would you disrespect your personal data? ZFS is perfect for home >>>>> use, >>>>> for reasons that have been discussed on this list and elsewhere. >>>>> >>>>> Apple also recognises this, which is why ZFS is in OS X 10.5 and will >>>>> presumably become the default boot filesystem. >>>>> >>>>> Sorry to wander a little offtopic, but IMHO - Apple needs to >>>>> acknowledge, >>>>> and tell their customers, that hard drives are unreliable >>>>> consumables. >>>>> >>>>> I am desperately looking forward to the day when they recognise the >>>>> need >>>>> to ship all their systems with: >>>>> 1) mirrored storage out of the box; >>>>> 2) easy user-swappable drives; >>>>> 3) foolproof fault notification and rectification. >>>>> >>>>> There is no reason why an Apple customer should not have this level >>>>> of >>>>> protection for her photo and video library, Great American Novel, or >>>>> whatever. Time Machine is a good first step (though it doesn''t often >>>>> work >>>>> smoothly for me with a LaCie external FW drive). >>>>> >>>>> These are the neglected pieces, IMHO, of their touted Digital >>>>> Lifestyle. >>>>> >>>>> --Toby >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> or just having some wine and music? >>>>>> >>>>>> Can we focus on commercial usage? >>>>>> please! >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> ----- Original Message ----- >>>>>> From: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org> >>>>>> To: "Brandon High" <bhigh at freaks.com> >>>>>> Cc: <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <Peter.Korn at sun.com> >>>>>> Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 9:28 PM >>>>>> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>>> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 4:53 PM, Brandon High <bhigh at freaks.com> >>>>>>> wrote: >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 7:45 AM, Joel Buckley <Joel.Buckley at sun.com> >>>>>>>> wrote: >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> How much is your time worth? >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Quite a bit. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> Consider the engineering effort going into every Sun Server. >>>>>>>>> Any system from Sun is more than sufficient for a home server. >>>>>>>>> You want more disks, then buy one with more slots. Done. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> A few years ago, I put together the NAS box currently in use at >>>>>>>> home >>>>>>>> for $300 for 1TB of space. Mind you, I recycled the RAM from >>>>>>>> another >>>>>>>> box and the four 250GB disks were free. I think 250 drives were >>>>>>>> around >>>>>>>> $200 at the time, so let''s say the system price was $1200. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> I don''t think there''s a Sun server that takes 4+ drives anywhere >>>>>>>> near >>>>>>>> $1200. The X4200 uses 2.5" drives, but costs $4255. Actually adding >>>>>>>> more drives ups the cost further. That means the afternoon I spent >>>>>>>> setting my server up was worth $3000. I should tell my boss that. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> A more reasonable comparison would be the Ultra 24. A system with >>>>>>>> 4x250 drives is $1650. I could build a 4 TB system today for *less* >>>>>>>> than my 1TB system of 2 years ago, so let''s use 3x750 + 1x250 >>>>>>>> drives. >>>>>>>> (That''s all the store will let me) and the price jumps to $2641. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Assume that I buy the cheapest x64 system (the X2100 M2 at $1228) >>>>>>>> and >>>>>>>> add a drive tray because I want 4 drives ... well I can''t. The >>>>>>>> cheapest drive tray is $7465. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> I have trouble justifying Sun hardware for many business >>>>>>>> applications >>>>>>>> that don''t require SPARC, let alone for the home. For custom >>>>>>>> systems >>>>>>>> that most tinkerers would want at home, a shop like Silicon >>>>>>>> Mechanics >>>>>>>> (http://www.siliconmechanics.com/) (or even Dell or HP) is almost >>>>>>>> always a better deal on hardware. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> I agree completely. About a year ago I spent around $800 (w/o >>>>>>> drives) >>>>>>> on a NAS box for home. I used a 4x PCI-X single-Xeon Supermicro >>>>>>> MB, >>>>>>> a >>>>>>> giant case, and a single 8-port Supermicro SATA card. Then I >>>>>>> dropped >>>>>>> a pair of 80 GB boot drives and 9x 500 GB drives into it. With >>>>>>> raidz2 >>>>>>> plus a spare, that gives me around 2.7T of usable space. When I >>>>>>> filled that up a few weeks back, I bought 2 more 8-port SATA cards, >>>>>>> 2 >>>>>>> Supermicro CSE-M35T-1B 5-drive hot-swap bays, and 9 1.5T drives, all >>>>>>> for under $2k. That''s around $0.25/GB for the expansion and $0.36 >>>>>>> overall, including last year''s expensive 500G drives. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> The closest that I can come to this config using current Sun >>>>>>> hardware >>>>>>> is probably the X4540 w/ 500G drives; that''s $35k for 14T of usable >>>>>>> disk (5x 8-way raidz2 + 1 spare + 2 boot disks), $2.48/GB. It''s >>>>>>> much >>>>>>> nicer hardware but I don''t care. I''d also need an electrician (for >>>>>>> 2x >>>>>>> 240V circuits), a dedicated server room in my house (for the fan >>>>>>> noise), and probably a divorce lawyer :-). >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Sun''s hardware really isn''t price-competitive on the low end, >>>>>>> especially when commercial support offerings have no value to you. >>>>>>> There''s nothing really wrong with this, as long as you understand >>>>>>> that >>>>>>> Sun''s really only going to be selling into shops where Sun''s support >>>>>>> and extra engineering makes financial sense. In Sun''s defense, this >>>>>>> is kind of an odd system, specially built for unusual requirements. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> My NAS box works well enough for me. It''s probably eaten ~20 hours >>>>>>> of >>>>>>> my time over the past year, partially because my Solaris is really >>>>>>> rusty and partially because pkg has left me with broken, unbootable >>>>>>> systems twice :-(. It''s hard to see how better hardware would have >>>>>>> helped with that, though. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Scott >>>>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>>>> zfs-discuss mailing list >>>>>>> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org >>>>>>> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >>>>>> >>>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>>> zfs-discuss mailing list >>>>>> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org >>>>>> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >>>>> >>>> >>>> >> >>
Are you planning to run Solaris on your laptop? Sent from my BlackBerry Bold? http://www.blackberrybold.com -----Original Message----- From: "JZ" <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2009 18:27:52 To: Scott Laird<scott at sigkill.org> Cc: Orvar Korvar<knatte_fnatte_tjatte at yahoo.com>; <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; Peter Korn<Peter.Korn at sun.com> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? Thanks much Scott, I still don''t know what you are talking about -- my $3000 to $800 laptops all never needed to swap any drive. But yeah, I got hit on all of them when I was in china, by the china web virus that no U.S. software could do anything [then a china open source thing did the job] So, without the swapping HD concern, what should I do??? z at home still confused ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org> To: "JZ" <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> Cc: "Toby Thain" <toby at telegraphics.com.au>; "Brandon High" <bhigh at freaks.com>; <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <Peter.Korn at sun.com>; "Orvar Korvar" <knatte_fnatte_tjatte at yahoo.com> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 6:20 PM Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS?> You can''t trust any hard drive. That''s what backups are for :-). > > Laptop hard drives aren''t much worse than desktop drives, and 2.5" > SATA drives are cheap. As long as they''re easy to swap, then a drive > failure isn''t the end of the world. Order a new drive ($100 or so), > swap them, and restore from backup. > > I haven''t dealt with PC laptops in years, so I can''t really compare > models. > > > Scott > > On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 2:40 PM, JZ <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> wrote: >> Thanks Scott, >> I was really itchy to order one, now I just want to save that open $ for >> Remy+++. >> >> Then, next question, can I trust any HD for my home laptop? should I go >> get >> a Sony VAIO or a cheap China-made thing would do? >> big price delta... >> >> z at home >> >> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org> >> To: "JZ" <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> >> Cc: "Toby Thain" <toby at telegraphics.com.au>; "Brandon High" >> <bhigh at freaks.com>; <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" >> <Peter.Korn at sun.com>; "Orvar Korvar" <knatte_fnatte_tjatte at yahoo.com> >> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 5:36 PM >> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? >> >> >>> Today? Low-power SSDs are probably less reliable than low-power hard >>> drives, although they''re too new to really know for certain. Given >>> the number of problems that vendors have had getting acceptable write >>> speeds, I''d be really amazed if they''ve done any real work on >>> long-term reliability yet. Going forward, SSDs will almost certainly >>> be more reliable, as long as you have something SMART-ish watching the >>> number of worn-out SSD cells and recommending preemptive replacement >>> of worn-out drives every few years. That should be a slow, >>> predictable process, unlike most HD failures. >>> >>> >>> Scott >>> >>> On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 2:30 PM, JZ <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> wrote: >>>> >>>> I was think about Apple''s new SSD drive option on laptops... >>>> >>>> is that safer than Apple''s HD or less safe? [maybe Orvar can help me on >>>> this] >>>> >>>> the price is a bit hefty for me to just order for experiment... >>>> Thanks! >>>> z at home >>>> >>>> >>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Toby Thain" >>>> <toby at telegraphics.com.au> >>>> To: "JZ" <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> >>>> Cc: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org>; "Brandon High" >>>> <bhigh at freaks.com>; >>>> <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <Peter.Korn at sun.com> >>>> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 5:25 PM >>>> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? >>>> >>>> >>>>> >>>>> On 7-Jan-09, at 9:43 PM, JZ wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> ok, Scott, that sounded sincere. I am not going to do the pic thing >>>>>> on >>>>>> you. >>>>>> >>>>>> But do I have to spell this out to you -- somethings are invented >>>>>> not >>>>>> for >>>>>> home use? >>>>>> >>>>>> Cindy, would you want to do ZFS at home, >>>>> >>>>> Why would you disrespect your personal data? ZFS is perfect for home >>>>> use, >>>>> for reasons that have been discussed on this list and elsewhere. >>>>> >>>>> Apple also recognises this, which is why ZFS is in OS X 10.5 and will >>>>> presumably become the default boot filesystem. >>>>> >>>>> Sorry to wander a little offtopic, but IMHO - Apple needs to >>>>> acknowledge, >>>>> and tell their customers, that hard drives are unreliable >>>>> consumables. >>>>> >>>>> I am desperately looking forward to the day when they recognise the >>>>> need >>>>> to ship all their systems with: >>>>> 1) mirrored storage out of the box; >>>>> 2) easy user-swappable drives; >>>>> 3) foolproof fault notification and rectification. >>>>> >>>>> There is no reason why an Apple customer should not have this level >>>>> of >>>>> protection for her photo and video library, Great American Novel, or >>>>> whatever. Time Machine is a good first step (though it doesn''t often >>>>> work >>>>> smoothly for me with a LaCie external FW drive). >>>>> >>>>> These are the neglected pieces, IMHO, of their touted Digital >>>>> Lifestyle. >>>>> >>>>> --Toby >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> or just having some wine and music? >>>>>> >>>>>> Can we focus on commercial usage? >>>>>> please! >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> ----- Original Message ----- >>>>>> From: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org> >>>>>> To: "Brandon High" <bhigh at freaks.com> >>>>>> Cc: <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <Peter.Korn at sun.com> >>>>>> Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 9:28 PM >>>>>> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>>> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 4:53 PM, Brandon High <bhigh at freaks.com> >>>>>>> wrote: >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 7:45 AM, Joel Buckley <Joel.Buckley at sun.com> >>>>>>>> wrote: >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> How much is your time worth? >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Quite a bit. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> Consider the engineering effort going into every Sun Server. >>>>>>>>> Any system from Sun is more than sufficient for a home server. >>>>>>>>> You want more disks, then buy one with more slots. Done. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> A few years ago, I put together the NAS box currently in use at >>>>>>>> home >>>>>>>> for $300 for 1TB of space. Mind you, I recycled the RAM from >>>>>>>> another >>>>>>>> box and the four 250GB disks were free. I think 250 drives were >>>>>>>> around >>>>>>>> $200 at the time, so let''s say the system price was $1200. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> I don''t think there''s a Sun server that takes 4+ drives anywhere >>>>>>>> near >>>>>>>> $1200. The X4200 uses 2.5" drives, but costs $4255. Actually adding >>>>>>>> more drives ups the cost further. That means the afternoon I spent >>>>>>>> setting my server up was worth $3000. I should tell my boss that. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> A more reasonable comparison would be the Ultra 24. A system with >>>>>>>> 4x250 drives is $1650. I could build a 4 TB system today for *less* >>>>>>>> than my 1TB system of 2 years ago, so let''s use 3x750 + 1x250 >>>>>>>> drives. >>>>>>>> (That''s all the store will let me) and the price jumps to $2641. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Assume that I buy the cheapest x64 system (the X2100 M2 at $1228) >>>>>>>> and >>>>>>>> add a drive tray because I want 4 drives ... well I can''t. The >>>>>>>> cheapest drive tray is $7465. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> I have trouble justifying Sun hardware for many business >>>>>>>> applications >>>>>>>> that don''t require SPARC, let alone for the home. For custom >>>>>>>> systems >>>>>>>> that most tinkerers would want at home, a shop like Silicon >>>>>>>> Mechanics >>>>>>>> (http://www.siliconmechanics.com/) (or even Dell or HP) is almost >>>>>>>> always a better deal on hardware. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> I agree completely. About a year ago I spent around $800 (w/o >>>>>>> drives) >>>>>>> on a NAS box for home. I used a 4x PCI-X single-Xeon Supermicro >>>>>>> MB, >>>>>>> a >>>>>>> giant case, and a single 8-port Supermicro SATA card. Then I >>>>>>> dropped >>>>>>> a pair of 80 GB boot drives and 9x 500 GB drives into it. With >>>>>>> raidz2 >>>>>>> plus a spare, that gives me around 2.7T of usable space. When I >>>>>>> filled that up a few weeks back, I bought 2 more 8-port SATA cards, >>>>>>> 2 >>>>>>> Supermicro CSE-M35T-1B 5-drive hot-swap bays, and 9 1.5T drives, all >>>>>>> for under $2k. That''s around $0.25/GB for the expansion and $0.36 >>>>>>> overall, including last year''s expensive 500G drives. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> The closest that I can come to this config using current Sun >>>>>>> hardware >>>>>>> is probably the X4540 w/ 500G drives; that''s $35k for 14T of usable >>>>>>> disk (5x 8-way raidz2 + 1 spare + 2 boot disks), $2.48/GB. It''s >>>>>>> much >>>>>>> nicer hardware but I don''t care. I''d also need an electrician (for >>>>>>> 2x >>>>>>> 240V circuits), a dedicated server room in my house (for the fan >>>>>>> noise), and probably a divorce lawyer :-). >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Sun''s hardware really isn''t price-competitive on the low end, >>>>>>> especially when commercial support offerings have no value to you. >>>>>>> There''s nothing really wrong with this, as long as you understand >>>>>>> that >>>>>>> Sun''s really only going to be selling into shops where Sun''s support >>>>>>> and extra engineering makes financial sense. In Sun''s defense, this >>>>>>> is kind of an odd system, specially built for unusual requirements. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> My NAS box works well enough for me. It''s probably eaten ~20 hours >>>>>>> of >>>>>>> my time over the past year, partially because my Solaris is really >>>>>>> rusty and partially because pkg has left me with broken, unbootable >>>>>>> systems twice :-(. It''s hard to see how better hardware would have >>>>>>> helped with that, though. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Scott >>>>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>>>> zfs-discuss mailing list >>>>>>> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org >>>>>>> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >>>>>> >>>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>>> zfs-discuss mailing list >>>>>> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org >>>>>> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >>>>> >>>> >>>> >> >>_______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
OMG! what a critical factor I just didn''t think about!!! stupid me! Moog, please, which laptops are supporting ZFS today? I will only buy within those. z, at home, feeling better, but still a bit confused ----- Original Message ----- From: "The Moog" <moog at pixelshift.com> To: "JZ" <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com>; <zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org>; "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org> Cc: "Orvar Korvar" <knatte_fnatte_tjatte at yahoo.com>; <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <Peter.Korn at sun.com> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 6:50 PM Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS?> Are you planning to run Solaris on your laptop? > > Sent from my BlackBerry Bold? > http://www.blackberrybold.com > > -----Original Message----- > From: "JZ" <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> > > Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2009 18:27:52 > To: Scott Laird<scott at sigkill.org> > Cc: Orvar Korvar<knatte_fnatte_tjatte at yahoo.com>; > <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; Peter Korn<Peter.Korn at sun.com> > Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? > > > Thanks much Scott, > I still don''t know what you are talking about -- my $3000 to $800 laptops > all never needed to swap any drive. > > But yeah, I got hit on all of them when I was in china, by the china web > virus that no U.S. software could do anything [then a china open source > thing did the job] > > So, without the swapping HD concern, what should I do??? > > z at home still confused > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org> > To: "JZ" <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> > Cc: "Toby Thain" <toby at telegraphics.com.au>; "Brandon High" > <bhigh at freaks.com>; <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" > <Peter.Korn at sun.com>; "Orvar Korvar" <knatte_fnatte_tjatte at yahoo.com> > Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 6:20 PM > Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? > > >> You can''t trust any hard drive. That''s what backups are for :-). >> >> Laptop hard drives aren''t much worse than desktop drives, and 2.5" >> SATA drives are cheap. As long as they''re easy to swap, then a drive >> failure isn''t the end of the world. Order a new drive ($100 or so), >> swap them, and restore from backup. >> >> I haven''t dealt with PC laptops in years, so I can''t really compare >> models. >> >> >> Scott >> >> On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 2:40 PM, JZ <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> wrote: >>> Thanks Scott, >>> I was really itchy to order one, now I just want to save that open $ for >>> Remy+++. >>> >>> Then, next question, can I trust any HD for my home laptop? should I go >>> get >>> a Sony VAIO or a cheap China-made thing would do? >>> big price delta... >>> >>> z at home >>> >>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org> >>> To: "JZ" <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> >>> Cc: "Toby Thain" <toby at telegraphics.com.au>; "Brandon High" >>> <bhigh at freaks.com>; <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" >>> <Peter.Korn at sun.com>; "Orvar Korvar" <knatte_fnatte_tjatte at yahoo.com> >>> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 5:36 PM >>> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? >>> >>> >>>> Today? Low-power SSDs are probably less reliable than low-power hard >>>> drives, although they''re too new to really know for certain. Given >>>> the number of problems that vendors have had getting acceptable write >>>> speeds, I''d be really amazed if they''ve done any real work on >>>> long-term reliability yet. Going forward, SSDs will almost certainly >>>> be more reliable, as long as you have something SMART-ish watching the >>>> number of worn-out SSD cells and recommending preemptive replacement >>>> of worn-out drives every few years. That should be a slow, >>>> predictable process, unlike most HD failures. >>>> >>>> >>>> Scott >>>> >>>> On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 2:30 PM, JZ <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> I was think about Apple''s new SSD drive option on laptops... >>>>> >>>>> is that safer than Apple''s HD or less safe? [maybe Orvar can help me >>>>> on >>>>> this] >>>>> >>>>> the price is a bit hefty for me to just order for experiment... >>>>> Thanks! >>>>> z at home >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Toby Thain" >>>>> <toby at telegraphics.com.au> >>>>> To: "JZ" <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> >>>>> Cc: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org>; "Brandon High" >>>>> <bhigh at freaks.com>; >>>>> <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <Peter.Korn at sun.com> >>>>> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 5:25 PM >>>>> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> On 7-Jan-09, at 9:43 PM, JZ wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>>> ok, Scott, that sounded sincere. I am not going to do the pic thing >>>>>>> on >>>>>>> you. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> But do I have to spell this out to you -- somethings are invented >>>>>>> not >>>>>>> for >>>>>>> home use? >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Cindy, would you want to do ZFS at home, >>>>>> >>>>>> Why would you disrespect your personal data? ZFS is perfect for home >>>>>> use, >>>>>> for reasons that have been discussed on this list and elsewhere. >>>>>> >>>>>> Apple also recognises this, which is why ZFS is in OS X 10.5 and will >>>>>> presumably become the default boot filesystem. >>>>>> >>>>>> Sorry to wander a little offtopic, but IMHO - Apple needs to >>>>>> acknowledge, >>>>>> and tell their customers, that hard drives are unreliable >>>>>> consumables. >>>>>> >>>>>> I am desperately looking forward to the day when they recognise the >>>>>> need >>>>>> to ship all their systems with: >>>>>> 1) mirrored storage out of the box; >>>>>> 2) easy user-swappable drives; >>>>>> 3) foolproof fault notification and rectification. >>>>>> >>>>>> There is no reason why an Apple customer should not have this level >>>>>> of >>>>>> protection for her photo and video library, Great American Novel, or >>>>>> whatever. Time Machine is a good first step (though it doesn''t often >>>>>> work >>>>>> smoothly for me with a LaCie external FW drive). >>>>>> >>>>>> These are the neglected pieces, IMHO, of their touted Digital >>>>>> Lifestyle. >>>>>> >>>>>> --Toby >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>>> or just having some wine and music? >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Can we focus on commercial usage? >>>>>>> please! >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> ----- Original Message ----- >>>>>>> From: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org> >>>>>>> To: "Brandon High" <bhigh at freaks.com> >>>>>>> Cc: <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <Peter.Korn at sun.com> >>>>>>> Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 9:28 PM >>>>>>> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 4:53 PM, Brandon High <bhigh at freaks.com> >>>>>>>> wrote: >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 7:45 AM, Joel Buckley >>>>>>>>> <Joel.Buckley at sun.com> >>>>>>>>> wrote: >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> How much is your time worth? >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> Quite a bit. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> Consider the engineering effort going into every Sun Server. >>>>>>>>>> Any system from Sun is more than sufficient for a home server. >>>>>>>>>> You want more disks, then buy one with more slots. Done. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> A few years ago, I put together the NAS box currently in use at >>>>>>>>> home >>>>>>>>> for $300 for 1TB of space. Mind you, I recycled the RAM from >>>>>>>>> another >>>>>>>>> box and the four 250GB disks were free. I think 250 drives were >>>>>>>>> around >>>>>>>>> $200 at the time, so let''s say the system price was $1200. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> I don''t think there''s a Sun server that takes 4+ drives anywhere >>>>>>>>> near >>>>>>>>> $1200. The X4200 uses 2.5" drives, but costs $4255. Actually >>>>>>>>> adding >>>>>>>>> more drives ups the cost further. That means the afternoon I spent >>>>>>>>> setting my server up was worth $3000. I should tell my boss that. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> A more reasonable comparison would be the Ultra 24. A system with >>>>>>>>> 4x250 drives is $1650. I could build a 4 TB system today for >>>>>>>>> *less* >>>>>>>>> than my 1TB system of 2 years ago, so let''s use 3x750 + 1x250 >>>>>>>>> drives. >>>>>>>>> (That''s all the store will let me) and the price jumps to $2641. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> Assume that I buy the cheapest x64 system (the X2100 M2 at $1228) >>>>>>>>> and >>>>>>>>> add a drive tray because I want 4 drives ... well I can''t. The >>>>>>>>> cheapest drive tray is $7465. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> I have trouble justifying Sun hardware for many business >>>>>>>>> applications >>>>>>>>> that don''t require SPARC, let alone for the home. For custom >>>>>>>>> systems >>>>>>>>> that most tinkerers would want at home, a shop like Silicon >>>>>>>>> Mechanics >>>>>>>>> (http://www.siliconmechanics.com/) (or even Dell or HP) is almost >>>>>>>>> always a better deal on hardware. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> I agree completely. About a year ago I spent around $800 (w/o >>>>>>>> drives) >>>>>>>> on a NAS box for home. I used a 4x PCI-X single-Xeon Supermicro >>>>>>>> MB, >>>>>>>> a >>>>>>>> giant case, and a single 8-port Supermicro SATA card. Then I >>>>>>>> dropped >>>>>>>> a pair of 80 GB boot drives and 9x 500 GB drives into it. With >>>>>>>> raidz2 >>>>>>>> plus a spare, that gives me around 2.7T of usable space. When I >>>>>>>> filled that up a few weeks back, I bought 2 more 8-port SATA cards, >>>>>>>> 2 >>>>>>>> Supermicro CSE-M35T-1B 5-drive hot-swap bays, and 9 1.5T drives, >>>>>>>> all >>>>>>>> for under $2k. That''s around $0.25/GB for the expansion and $0.36 >>>>>>>> overall, including last year''s expensive 500G drives. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> The closest that I can come to this config using current Sun >>>>>>>> hardware >>>>>>>> is probably the X4540 w/ 500G drives; that''s $35k for 14T of usable >>>>>>>> disk (5x 8-way raidz2 + 1 spare + 2 boot disks), $2.48/GB. It''s >>>>>>>> much >>>>>>>> nicer hardware but I don''t care. I''d also need an electrician >>>>>>>> (for >>>>>>>> 2x >>>>>>>> 240V circuits), a dedicated server room in my house (for the fan >>>>>>>> noise), and probably a divorce lawyer :-). >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Sun''s hardware really isn''t price-competitive on the low end, >>>>>>>> especially when commercial support offerings have no value to you. >>>>>>>> There''s nothing really wrong with this, as long as you understand >>>>>>>> that >>>>>>>> Sun''s really only going to be selling into shops where Sun''s >>>>>>>> support >>>>>>>> and extra engineering makes financial sense. In Sun''s defense, >>>>>>>> this >>>>>>>> is kind of an odd system, specially built for unusual requirements. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> My NAS box works well enough for me. It''s probably eaten ~20 >>>>>>>> hours >>>>>>>> of >>>>>>>> my time over the past year, partially because my Solaris is really >>>>>>>> rusty and partially because pkg has left me with broken, unbootable >>>>>>>> systems twice :-(. It''s hard to see how better hardware would have >>>>>>>> helped with that, though. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Scott >>>>>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>>>>> zfs-discuss mailing list >>>>>>>> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org >>>>>>>> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >>>>>>> >>>>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>>>> zfs-discuss mailing list >>>>>>> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org >>>>>>> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>> >>> > > _______________________________________________ > zfs-discuss mailing list > zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >
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Scott Laird wrote:> Today? Low-power SSDs are probably less reliable than low-power hard > drives, although they''re too new to really know for certain. Given > the number of problems that vendors have had getting acceptable write > speeds, I''d be really amazed if they''ve done any real work on > long-term reliability yet.Eh? Flash has been around for well over 25 years and the technology is well understood. Trivia: Sun has been shipping flash memory for nearly its entire history. What hasn''t happened until relatively recently is that the vendors married high density flash with a decent controller which expects and manages failures -- like the disk drive guys did 20 years ago. It occurs to me that you might be too young to remember that format(1m) was the tool used to do media analysis and map bad sectors before those smarts were moved onto the disk ? ;-) Why, we used to have to regularly scan the media, reserve spare cylinders, and map out bad sectors in the snow, walking uphill, in our bare feet because shoes hadn''t been invented yet... ;-)> Going forward, SSDs will almost certainly > be more reliable, as long as you have something SMART-ish watching the > number of worn-out SSD cells and recommending preemptive replacement > of worn-out drives every few years. That should be a slow, > predictable process, unlike most HD failures. >I think you will find that failures can still be catastrophic. But from a typical reliability analysis, the SSDs will be more reliable than HDDs. The enterprise SSDs have DRAM front-ends and plenty of spare cells to accommodate expected enterprise use. FWIW, I expect an MTBF of 3-4M hours for enterprise SSDs as compared to 1.6M hours for a top-tier enterprise HDD. More worrying is the relative newness of the firmware... but software reliability is a whole different ballgame. Rumor was that STEC won one of the Apple contracts http://webfeet.sp360hosting.com/Lists/Research%20News/DispForm.aspx?ID=32 STEC also supplies Sun and EMC. But the competition is really heating up with Intel and Samsung having made several recent announcements. We do live in interesting times :-) -- richard
OMG, Rich, that did help and solved all my confusion and now I can go to sleep... So now I have to consider Sun and EMC vs Intel in my home $ spending?! Forget it, Lenovo it is! at least my folks get a cut. Goodnight! best, z ----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard Elling" <Richard.Elling at Sun.COM> To: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org> Cc: "JZ" <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com>; "Orvar Korvar" <knatte_fnatte_tjatte at yahoo.com>; <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <Peter.Korn at Sun.COM> Sent: Friday, January 09, 2009 1:09 AM Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS?> Scott Laird wrote: >> Today? Low-power SSDs are probably less reliable than low-power hard >> drives, although they''re too new to really know for certain. Given >> the number of problems that vendors have had getting acceptable write >> speeds, I''d be really amazed if they''ve done any real work on >> long-term reliability yet. > > Eh? Flash has been around for well over 25 years and the > technology is well understood. Trivia: Sun has been shipping > flash memory for nearly its entire history. What hasn''t happened > until relatively recently is that the vendors married high density > flash with a decent controller which expects and manages failures -- > like the disk drive guys did 20 years ago. It occurs to me that > you might be too young to remember that format(1m) was the > tool used to do media analysis and map bad sectors before those > smarts were moved onto the disk ? ;-) Why, we used to have to > regularly scan the media, reserve spare cylinders, and map out > bad sectors in the snow, walking uphill, in our bare feet because > shoes hadn''t been invented yet... ;-) > >> Going forward, SSDs will almost certainly >> be more reliable, as long as you have something SMART-ish watching the >> number of worn-out SSD cells and recommending preemptive replacement >> of worn-out drives every few years. That should be a slow, >> predictable process, unlike most HD failures. >> > > I think you will find that failures can still be catastrophic. > But from a typical reliability analysis, the SSDs will be more > reliable than HDDs. The enterprise SSDs have DRAM > front-ends and plenty of spare cells to accommodate expected > enterprise use. FWIW, I expect an MTBF of 3-4M hours for > enterprise SSDs as compared to 1.6M hours for a top-tier > enterprise HDD. More worrying is the relative newness of the > firmware... but software reliability is a whole different ballgame. > > Rumor was that STEC won one of the Apple contracts > http://webfeet.sp360hosting.com/Lists/Research%20News/DispForm.aspx?ID=32 > STEC also supplies Sun and EMC. But the competition is > really heating up with Intel and Samsung having made several > recent announcements. We do live in interesting times :-) > -- richard >
Joel Buckley wrote:> > Search "http://store.sun.com" for the item that matches your > needs and run with it. Sun currently has a promotion on X4150 > Servers... That will easily be able to serve NFS, SunRay, > etc... to your home. > >Do they come with free ear plugs for the family? :) -- Ian.
I wouldn''t know which laptops (beside macbooks) that specifically support zfs, but I''m sure with a little twiddling around and some general know-how, many a system would operate the latest version of opensolaris. Driver support is always my biggest worry. Sent from my BlackBerry Bold? http://www.blackberrybold.com -----Original Message----- From: "JZ" <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2009 18:52:10 To: <moog at pixelshift.com>; <zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org>; Scott Laird<scott at sigkill.org> Cc: Orvar Korvar<knatte_fnatte_tjatte at yahoo.com>; <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; Peter Korn<Peter.Korn at sun.com> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? OMG! what a critical factor I just didn''t think about!!! stupid me! Moog, please, which laptops are supporting ZFS today? I will only buy within those. z, at home, feeling better, but still a bit confused ----- Original Message ----- From: "The Moog" <moog at pixelshift.com> To: "JZ" <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com>; <zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org>; "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org> Cc: "Orvar Korvar" <knatte_fnatte_tjatte at yahoo.com>; <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <Peter.Korn at sun.com> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 6:50 PM Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS?> Are you planning to run Solaris on your laptop? > > Sent from my BlackBerry Bold? > http://www.blackberrybold.com > > -----Original Message----- > From: "JZ" <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> > > Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2009 18:27:52 > To: Scott Laird<scott at sigkill.org> > Cc: Orvar Korvar<knatte_fnatte_tjatte at yahoo.com>; > <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; Peter Korn<Peter.Korn at sun.com> > Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? > > > Thanks much Scott, > I still don''t know what you are talking about -- my $3000 to $800 laptops > all never needed to swap any drive. > > But yeah, I got hit on all of them when I was in china, by the china web > virus that no U.S. software could do anything [then a china open source > thing did the job] > > So, without the swapping HD concern, what should I do??? > > z at home still confused > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org> > To: "JZ" <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> > Cc: "Toby Thain" <toby at telegraphics.com.au>; "Brandon High" > <bhigh at freaks.com>; <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" > <Peter.Korn at sun.com>; "Orvar Korvar" <knatte_fnatte_tjatte at yahoo.com> > Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 6:20 PM > Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? > > >> You can''t trust any hard drive. That''s what backups are for :-). >> >> Laptop hard drives aren''t much worse than desktop drives, and 2.5" >> SATA drives are cheap. As long as they''re easy to swap, then a drive >> failure isn''t the end of the world. Order a new drive ($100 or so), >> swap them, and restore from backup. >> >> I haven''t dealt with PC laptops in years, so I can''t really compare >> models. >> >> >> Scott >> >> On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 2:40 PM, JZ <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> wrote: >>> Thanks Scott, >>> I was really itchy to order one, now I just want to save that open $ for >>> Remy+++. >>> >>> Then, next question, can I trust any HD for my home laptop? should I go >>> get >>> a Sony VAIO or a cheap China-made thing would do? >>> big price delta... >>> >>> z at home >>> >>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org> >>> To: "JZ" <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> >>> Cc: "Toby Thain" <toby at telegraphics.com.au>; "Brandon High" >>> <bhigh at freaks.com>; <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" >>> <Peter.Korn at sun.com>; "Orvar Korvar" <knatte_fnatte_tjatte at yahoo.com> >>> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 5:36 PM >>> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? >>> >>> >>>> Today? Low-power SSDs are probably less reliable than low-power hard >>>> drives, although they''re too new to really know for certain. Given >>>> the number of problems that vendors have had getting acceptable write >>>> speeds, I''d be really amazed if they''ve done any real work on >>>> long-term reliability yet. Going forward, SSDs will almost certainly >>>> be more reliable, as long as you have something SMART-ish watching the >>>> number of worn-out SSD cells and recommending preemptive replacement >>>> of worn-out drives every few years. That should be a slow, >>>> predictable process, unlike most HD failures. >>>> >>>> >>>> Scott >>>> >>>> On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 2:30 PM, JZ <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> I was think about Apple''s new SSD drive option on laptops... >>>>> >>>>> is that safer than Apple''s HD or less safe? [maybe Orvar can help me >>>>> on >>>>> this] >>>>> >>>>> the price is a bit hefty for me to just order for experiment... >>>>> Thanks! >>>>> z at home >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Toby Thain" >>>>> <toby at telegraphics.com.au> >>>>> To: "JZ" <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> >>>>> Cc: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org>; "Brandon High" >>>>> <bhigh at freaks.com>; >>>>> <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <Peter.Korn at sun.com> >>>>> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 5:25 PM >>>>> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> On 7-Jan-09, at 9:43 PM, JZ wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>>> ok, Scott, that sounded sincere. I am not going to do the pic thing >>>>>>> on >>>>>>> you. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> But do I have to spell this out to you -- somethings are invented >>>>>>> not >>>>>>> for >>>>>>> home use? >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Cindy, would you want to do ZFS at home, >>>>>> >>>>>> Why would you disrespect your personal data? ZFS is perfect for home >>>>>> use, >>>>>> for reasons that have been discussed on this list and elsewhere. >>>>>> >>>>>> Apple also recognises this, which is why ZFS is in OS X 10.5 and will >>>>>> presumably become the default boot filesystem. >>>>>> >>>>>> Sorry to wander a little offtopic, but IMHO - Apple needs to >>>>>> acknowledge, >>>>>> and tell their customers, that hard drives are unreliable >>>>>> consumables. >>>>>> >>>>>> I am desperately looking forward to the day when they recognise the >>>>>> need >>>>>> to ship all their systems with: >>>>>> 1) mirrored storage out of the box; >>>>>> 2) easy user-swappable drives; >>>>>> 3) foolproof fault notification and rectification. >>>>>> >>>>>> There is no reason why an Apple customer should not have this level >>>>>> of >>>>>> protection for her photo and video library, Great American Novel, or >>>>>> whatever. Time Machine is a good first step (though it doesn''t often >>>>>> work >>>>>> smoothly for me with a LaCie external FW drive). >>>>>> >>>>>> These are the neglected pieces, IMHO, of their touted Digital >>>>>> Lifestyle. >>>>>> >>>>>> --Toby >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>>> or just having some wine and music? >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Can we focus on commercial usage? >>>>>>> please! >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> ----- Original Message ----- >>>>>>> From: "Scott Laird" <scott at sigkill.org> >>>>>>> To: "Brandon High" <bhigh at freaks.com> >>>>>>> Cc: <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <Peter.Korn at sun.com> >>>>>>> Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 9:28 PM >>>>>>> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 4:53 PM, Brandon High <bhigh at freaks.com> >>>>>>>> wrote: >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 7:45 AM, Joel Buckley >>>>>>>>> <Joel.Buckley at sun.com> >>>>>>>>> wrote: >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> How much is your time worth? >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> Quite a bit. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> Consider the engineering effort going into every Sun Server. >>>>>>>>>> Any system from Sun is more than sufficient for a home server. >>>>>>>>>> You want more disks, then buy one with more slots. Done. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> A few years ago, I put together the NAS box currently in use at >>>>>>>>> home >>>>>>>>> for $300 for 1TB of space. Mind you, I recycled the RAM from >>>>>>>>> another >>>>>>>>> box and the four 250GB disks were free. I think 250 drives were >>>>>>>>> around >>>>>>>>> $200 at the time, so let''s say the system price was $1200. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> I don''t think there''s a Sun server that takes 4+ drives anywhere >>>>>>>>> near >>>>>>>>> $1200. The X4200 uses 2.5" drives, but costs $4255. Actually >>>>>>>>> adding >>>>>>>>> more drives ups the cost further. That means the afternoon I spent >>>>>>>>> setting my server up was worth $3000. I should tell my boss that. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> A more reasonable comparison would be the Ultra 24. A system with >>>>>>>>> 4x250 drives is $1650. I could build a 4 TB system today for >>>>>>>>> *less* >>>>>>>>> than my 1TB system of 2 years ago, so let''s use 3x750 + 1x250 >>>>>>>>> drives. >>>>>>>>> (That''s all the store will let me) and the price jumps to $2641. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> Assume that I buy the cheapest x64 system (the X2100 M2 at $1228) >>>>>>>>> and >>>>>>>>> add a drive tray because I want 4 drives ... well I can''t. The >>>>>>>>> cheapest drive tray is $7465. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> I have trouble justifying Sun hardware for many business >>>>>>>>> applications >>>>>>>>> that don''t require SPARC, let alone for the home. For custom >>>>>>>>> systems >>>>>>>>> that most tinkerers would want at home, a shop like Silicon >>>>>>>>> Mechanics >>>>>>>>> (http://www.siliconmechanics.com/) (or even Dell or HP) is almost >>>>>>>>> always a better deal on hardware. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> I agree completely. About a year ago I spent around $800 (w/o >>>>>>>> drives) >>>>>>>> on a NAS box for home. I used a 4x PCI-X single-Xeon Supermicro >>>>>>>> MB, >>>>>>>> a >>>>>>>> giant case, and a single 8-port Supermicro SATA card. Then I >>>>>>>> dropped >>>>>>>> a pair of 80 GB boot drives and 9x 500 GB drives into it. With >>>>>>>> raidz2 >>>>>>>> plus a spare, that gives me around 2.7T of usable space. When I >>>>>>>> filled that up a few weeks back, I bought 2 more 8-port SATA cards, >>>>>>>> 2 >>>>>>>> Supermicro CSE-M35T-1B 5-drive hot-swap bays, and 9 1.5T drives, >>>>>>>> all >>>>>>>> for under $2k. That''s around $0.25/GB for the expansion and $0.36 >>>>>>>> overall, including last year''s expensive 500G drives. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> The closest that I can come to this config using current Sun >>>>>>>> hardware >>>>>>>> is probably the X4540 w/ 500G drives; that''s $35k for 14T of usable >>>>>>>> disk (5x 8-way raidz2 + 1 spare + 2 boot disks), $2.48/GB. It''s >>>>>>>> much >>>>>>>> nicer hardware but I don''t care. I''d also need an electrician >>>>>>>> (for >>>>>>>> 2x >>>>>>>> 240V circuits), a dedicated server room in my house (for the fan >>>>>>>> noise), and probably a divorce lawyer :-). >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Sun''s hardware really isn''t price-competitive on the low end, >>>>>>>> especially when commercial support offerings have no value to you. >>>>>>>> There''s nothing really wrong with this, as long as you understand >>>>>>>> that >>>>>>>> Sun''s really only going to be selling into shops where Sun''s >>>>>>>> support >>>>>>>> and extra engineering makes financial sense. In Sun''s defense, >>>>>>>> this >>>>>>>> is kind of an odd system, specially built for unusual requirements. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> My NAS box works well enough for me. It''s probably eaten ~20 >>>>>>>> hours >>>>>>>> of >>>>>>>> my time over the past year, partially because my Solaris is really >>>>>>>> rusty and partially because pkg has left me with broken, unbootable >>>>>>>> systems twice :-(. It''s hard to see how better hardware would have >>>>>>>> helped with that, though. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Scott >>>>>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>>>>> zfs-discuss mailing list >>>>>>>> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org >>>>>>>> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >>>>>>> >>>>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>>>> zfs-discuss mailing list >>>>>>> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org >>>>>>> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>> >>> > > _______________________________________________ > zfs-discuss mailing list > zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >
On Thu, January 8, 2009 15:35, Tim wrote:> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 8:43 PM, JZ <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> wrote: >> >> Can we focus on commercial usage? >> please!> I dunno about you, but I need somewhere to store that music so I can > stream > it throughout the house while I''m drinking that wine ;) A single disk > windows box isn''t really my cup-o-tea. Plus, I''m a geek, my vmware farm > needs it''s nfs mounts on some solid, high performing gear.While my music has ended up there, it''s my digital photos that actually pushed me into an NAS-type environment. I wanted something better than single-disk reliability plus backups, plus I''ve found my backups happen better on the Solaris-based NAS than they did under windows (I never found an adequate Windows backup product, whereas rsync to external USB drives works perfectly, with the added benefit that my backup isn''t locked up in a proprietary format). The enterprise features figure prominently, especially snapshots. And it''s a BIG DEAL for me to know that a scrub has verified data even if I haven''t accessed it lately; old photos in my collection are still important to me. -- David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b at dd-b.net; http://dd-b.net/ Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/ Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/ Dragaera: http://dragaera.info
>>>>> "re" == Richard Elling <Richard.Elling at Sun.COM> writes:re> Flash has been around for well over 25 years there is NOR flash and NAND flash, though. I think NOR is 25 years old, and MLC and SLC FLASH are both NAND right? NOR and NAND have completely different behavior and implementation, and even within NAND the number of tolerated write cycles varies wildly MLC vs SLC and vendor vs vendor. Also wasn''t someone saying the cheapo USB sticks do wear leveling in 16MB chunks, so if one of the chunks is hotter than others you might blow it sooner than you expect based on device-wide write cycles * size / bandwidth? software people would assume the wear leveling chunk size is the entire device, otherwise what does ``level'''' mean, but apparently the electrical engineer monkeys have a different idea. The quality or chunk-size of wear leveling could vary from one device to another. I think hard disks are a little different in their failure behavior after increasing 100x in capacity, too, though. re> Trivia: Sun has been shipping flash memory for nearly its re> entire history. are you talking about the firmware? because that''s NOR FLASH which is completely different. I''m not saying don''t use it, but this sounds too much like Apple telling us 400 megaBIT/s firewire is faster than 80 megaBYTE/s parallel-SCSI. re> It occurs to me that you might be too young to remember that re> format(1m) was the tool used to do media analysis and map bad re> sectors before those smarts were moved onto the disk ? ;-) yeah im old enough to remember. the smarts stayed redundantly in format long after it was moved into the disk. I thought one of those netapp .pdf''s said they deliberately tell some of their SCSI/FC disks to stop doing reallocation and pass bad block errors up the stack. but aside from that all these SCSI disks do it, even the 5.25" ones. I''m old enough to remember that every SCSI Sun system I''ve used including even VME-based systems and Sun3/60''s use SCSI disks which would do their own bad block remapping. I haven''t used SMD disks. I used ST506 and ESDI disks in peecees, and with those you got a sheet of dot-matrix printout taped to the top of the drive by the manufacturer. The factory test for bad sectors with special controller boards that you don''t have, to find marginal sectors you will miss if you do your own ``low-level format'''' scan---although the disk layer does have to do remapping, and although you do scan for bad sectors during low-level format, with ST506 and ESDI disks you will not scan any bad sectors not marked on the printout unless your disk is failing, and you must use the printout to avoid marginal sectors. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 304 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/attachments/20090109/6825fbb6/attachment.bin>
Ok, since this thread is the official spot for home based chatting, I am off work now. Similar feeling from an enterprise perspective -- I am the last person at work that has not even once, logged on to FaceBook. [no need, I insist] And I can do a zFaceBook on 100% zCode anytime, only if I want to spend my open time on that. And security -- I cannot afford the time and efforts to do my own secure enterprise at home, so, sorry, the important personal stuff, probably just as Mr. Tucci, are all on company infrastructure. ;-) best, z at home ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Dyer-Bennet" <dd-b at dd-b.net> To: <zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org> Sent: Friday, January 09, 2009 12:58 PM Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS?> > On Thu, January 8, 2009 15:35, Tim wrote: >> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 8:43 PM, JZ <jz at excelsioritsolutions.com> wrote: >>> >>> Can we focus on commercial usage? >>> please! > >> I dunno about you, but I need somewhere to store that music so I can >> stream >> it throughout the house while I''m drinking that wine ;) A single disk >> windows box isn''t really my cup-o-tea. Plus, I''m a geek, my vmware farm >> needs it''s nfs mounts on some solid, high performing gear. > > While my music has ended up there, it''s my digital photos that actually > pushed me into an NAS-type environment. I wanted something better than > single-disk reliability plus backups, plus I''ve found my backups happen > better on the Solaris-based NAS than they did under windows (I never found > an adequate Windows backup product, whereas rsync to external USB drives > works perfectly, with the added benefit that my backup isn''t locked up in > a proprietary format). > > The enterprise features figure prominently, especially snapshots. And > it''s a BIG DEAL for me to know that a scrub has verified data even if I > haven''t accessed it lately; old photos in my collection are still > important to me. > > -- > David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b at dd-b.net; http://dd-b.net/ > Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/ > Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/ > Dragaera: http://dragaera.info > > _______________________________________________ > zfs-discuss mailing list > zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss