zfs discuss - Nov 2008 - Best practice for ZFS on boot disk - use HW RAID? or ZFS Mirroring?

I''m very glad to see ZFS for boot available now. We have begun to use 
X4150 servers and had settled on using the built-in HW RAID for mirroring 
the drives in pairs. Two for Boot, two for data etc...

Is it a good idea to first create a HW RAID mirror and then install the OS using
ZFS on that RAID device?  Or, would it be better to not use the HW RAID and 
just go with ZFS mirroring?
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On 11/18/2008 1:04 PM, Raymond Scott wrote:
> I''m very glad to see ZFS for boot available now. We have begun to
use
> X4150 servers and had settled on using the built-in HW RAID for mirroring
> the drives in pairs. Two for Boot, two for data etc...
>
> Is it a good idea to first create a HW RAID mirror and then install the OS
using
> ZFS on that RAID device?  Or, would it be better to not use the HW RAID and
> just go with ZFS mirroring?
Use ZFS mirroring instead. Checksum protection, better observability, 
migratability, etc.

Personally, I did ZFS Mirroring for the boot and RAID-Z2 for the data.

The primary reason I did ZFS Mirroring instead of HW Mirroring for the boot
is that my motherboard did the hybrid hw raid and required reboot to fix it
in case of failure. With ZFS mirroring, it''s hot swappable.

Malachi

On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 1:12 PM, Carson Gaspar <carson at taltos.org>
wrote:
> On 11/18/2008 1:04 PM, Raymond Scott wrote:
> > I''m very glad to see ZFS for boot available now. We have
begun to use
> > X4150 servers and had settled on using the built-in HW RAID for
mirroring
> > the drives in pairs. Two for Boot, two for data etc...
> >
> > Is it a good idea to first create a HW RAID mirror and then install
the
> OS using
> > ZFS on that RAID device?  Or, would it be better to not use the HW
RAID
> and
> > just go with ZFS mirroring?
>
> Use ZFS mirroring instead. Checksum protection, better observability,
> migratability, etc.
> _______________________________________________
> zfs-discuss mailing list
> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org
> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
>
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Raymond Scott wrote:
> I''m very glad to see ZFS for boot available now. We have begun to
use
> X4150 servers and had settled on using the built-in HW RAID for mirroring 
> the drives in pairs. Two for Boot, two for data etc...
> 
> Is it a good idea to first create a HW RAID mirror and then install the OS
using
> ZFS on that RAID device?  Or, would it be better to not use the HW RAID and
> just go with ZFS mirroring?
It demends (as usual). If you''re on a support contract with Sun then
you can opt
for the HW RAID but if you want to run something rock solid with only your own 
support, I''d say go for ZFS.

I always love answering my on questions....

http://www.solarisinternals.com/wiki/index.php/ZFS_Best_Practices_Guide
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