Gabriele Bulfon
2010-May-07 07:48 UTC
[zfs-discuss] Disks configuration for a zfs based samba/cifs file server
Hi, I would love some suggestions for an implementation I''m going to deploy. I will have a machine with 4x1T disks, going to be a file server for both windows and osx clients through smb/cifs. I have read on "zfs best practices" articles that slicing is not suggested (unless you want to just create one slice for each disk to slightly lower each disk size, to be prepared for disks small differences in case of substitution of any of them). The best method I''ve read is to create 2 zpool mirrors of the entire disks, trying to cross controllers in each mirror, and having both mirrors into one zfs mount. This is clear to me. This is for the file server data. Question is...where should install the OS now?! Usually 10-20Gb is enough to install the entire distribution of Solaris, so I usually slice 2 disks, so to have a mirrored boot slice, then create the data zpool by joining the remaining mirrored slices of the boot disks with the entire remaining mirrored disk. Now I read this is not the best practice. In case I have another 2 disks slot, I may add another 2 smaller disks for the OS boot. But even in this case, minimum sizes for this smaller disks would lead me to a very big boot disk, almost wasted space. What should I actually do in these cases? Last question: in this deployment, my windows/osx users have no windows domain. Running samba and sharing to users is quick and easy. Would it be better to use native cifs sharing options of zfs? Would it work even in a non window-domain-controlled network? Thanks a lot, Gabriele. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
Bob Friesenhahn
2010-May-07 15:46 UTC
[zfs-discuss] Disks configuration for a zfs based samba/cifs file server
On Fri, 7 May 2010, Gabriele Bulfon wrote:> I have read on "zfs best practices" articles that slicing is not suggested (unless you want to just create one slice for each disk to slightly lower each disk size, to be prepared for disks small differences in case of substitution of any of them). > The best method I''ve read is to create 2 zpool mirrors of the entire disks, trying to cross controllers in each mirror, and having both mirrors into one zfs mount. > This is clear to me. This is for the file server data. > Question is...where should install the OS now?! > Usually 10-20Gb is enough to install the entire distribution of Solaris, so I usually slice 2 disks, so to have a mirrored boot slice, then create the data zpool by joining the remaining mirrored slices of the boot disks with the entire remaining mirrored disk. > Now I read this is not the best practice.Best practice is a matter of opinion. If using slices allows you to effectively host mirrored OS boot while still using all four disks in a larger pool, then that might be the best approach for you. If you could find a way to add a dedicated boot/root disk (maybe a small reliable SSD) than that might be even better. The good news is that if you do slice your disks, you can change your mind in the future if/when you add more disks. Bob -- Bob Friesenhahn bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/ GraphicsMagick Maintainer, http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/