Hi! I''m running a OSOL box for quite a while and I think ZFS is an amazing filesystem. As a computer I use a Apple MacMini with USB and FireWire devices attached. Unfortunately the USB and sometimes the FW devices just die, causing the whole system to stall, forcing me to do a hard reboot. I had the worst experience with an USB-SATA bridge running an Oxford chipset, in a way that the four external devices stalled randomly within a day or so. I switched to a four slot raid box, also with USB bridge, but with better reliability. Well, I wonder what are the components to build a stable system without having an enterprise solution: eSATA, USB, FireWire, FibreChannel? Martin
On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 12:29 PM, Dr. Martin Mundschenk <m.mundschenk at me.com> wrote:> Well, I wonder what are the components to build a stable system without having an enterprise solution: eSATA, USB, FireWire, FibreChannel?I wouldn''t consider anything except FC or SAS for a true enterprise solution. -B -- Brandon High : bhigh at freaks.com
sas-2 with 7200 rpm sas 1tb ot 2tb hdd ------- Original message -------> From: Dr. Martin Mundschenk <m.mundschenk at me.com> > To: zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org > Sent: 25.8.''10, 15:29 > > Hi! > > I''m running a OSOL box for quite a while and I think ZFS is an amazing > filesystem. As a computer I use a Apple MacMini with USB and FireWire > devices attached. Unfortunately the USB and sometimes the FW devices just > die, causing the whole system to stall, forcing me to do a hard reboot. > > I had the worst experience with an USB-SATA bridge running an Oxford > chipset, in a way that the four external devices stalled randomly within a > day or so. I switched to a four slot raid box, also with USB bridge, but > with better reliability. > > Well, I wonder what are the components to build a stable system without > having an enterprise solution: eSATA, USB, FireWire, FibreChannel? > > Martin > _______________________________________________ > zfs-discuss mailing list > zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
I''m currently using SXCE with eSATA (with an LSI controller) and SAS disks in my home boxes and they run just fine. The only glitch I had after LU-upgrading to the latest release is eSATA disk not spinning down any longer when idle. I export file systems with NFS to my Macs: beware that Mac OS X uses decomposed UTF-8 characters and sometimes I have some portability issues when file names contain, for example, accented characters. It runs fine and pretty better than CIFS, IMHO. In some case I use an OS X iSCSI initiator and Comstar: it runs fine and it''s the only solution I found if you need, for example, to use time machine upon a ZFS volume. Bye, Enrico -- Enrico M. Crisostomo On Aug 25, 2010, at 21:29, "Dr. Martin Mundschenk" <m.mundschenk at me.com> wrote:> Hi! > > I''m running a OSOL box for quite a while and I think ZFS is an amazing filesystem. As a computer I use a Apple MacMini with USB and FireWire devices attached. Unfortunately the USB and sometimes the FW devices just die, causing the whole system to stall, forcing me to do a hard reboot. > > I had the worst experience with an USB-SATA bridge running an Oxford chipset, in a way that the four external devices stalled randomly within a day or so. I switched to a four slot raid box, also with USB bridge, but with better reliability. > > Well, I wonder what are the components to build a stable system without having an enterprise solution: eSATA, USB, FireWire, FibreChannel? > > Martin > _______________________________________________ > zfs-discuss mailing list > zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 12:29 PM, Dr. Martin Mundschenk <m.mundschenk at me.com> wrote:> I''m running a OSOL box for quite a while and I think ZFS is an amazing filesystem. As a computer I use a Apple MacMini with USB and FireWire devices attached. Unfortunately the USB and sometimes the FW devices just die, causing the whole system to stall, forcing me to do a hard reboot. > > I had the worst experience with an USB-SATA bridge running an Oxford chipset, in a way that the four external devices stalled randomly within a day or so. I switched to a four slot raid box, also with USB bridge, but with better reliability. > > Well, I wonder what are the components to build a stable system without having an enterprise solution: eSATA, USB, FireWire, FibreChannel?If possible to get a card to fit into a MacMini, eSATA would be a lot better than USB or FireWire. If there''s any way to run cables from inside the case, you can "make do" with plain SATA and longer cables. Otherwise, you''ll need to look into something other than a MacMini for your storage box. -- Freddie Cash fjwcash at gmail.com
> From: zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss- > bounces at opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Dr. Martin Mundschenk > > devices attached. Unfortunately the USB and sometimes the FW devices > just die, causing the whole system to stall, forcing me to do a hard > reboot. > > Well, I wonder what are the components to build a stable system without > having an enterprise solution: eSATA, USB, FireWire, FibreChannel?There is no such thing as reliable external disks. Not unless you want to pay $1000 each, which is dumb. You have to scrap your mini, and use internal (or hotswappable) disks. Never expect a mini to be reliable. They''re designed to be small and cute. Not reliable.
Am 26.08.2010 um 04:38 schrieb Edward Ned Harvey:> There is no such thing as reliable external disks. Not unless you want to > pay $1000 each, which is dumb. You have to scrap your mini, and use > internal (or hotswappable) disks. > > Never expect a mini to be reliable. They''re designed to be small and cute. > Not reliable.The MacMini and the disks themselves are just fine. The problem seems to be the SATA-bridges to USB/FW. They just stall, when the load gets heavy. Martin
> On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 12:29 PM, Dr. Martin > Mundschenk > <m.mundschenk at me.com> wrote: > > Well, I wonder what are the components to build a > stable system without having an enterprise solution: > eSATA, USB, FireWire, FibreChannel? > > If possible to get a card to fit into a MacMini, > eSATA would be a lot > better than USB or FireWire. > > If there''s any way to run cables from inside the > case, you can "make > do" with plain SATA and longer cables. > > Otherwise, you''ll need to look into something other > than a MacMini for > your storage box.If bandwidth is a concern, consider these "napkin estimates": A bare 7200rpm SATA drive will typically get 60 MB/s SATA II is 300 MB/s Gigabit ethernet 60 MB/s 100Mbit 11.4 MB/s USB 2.0 is 30 MB/s Firewire 400 35 MB/s Firewire 800 55 MB/s I usually see 17 MB/s max on an external USB 2.0 drive. For 300 GB, the USB will take at best 5.5 hrs. SATA will be 1.5 hrs. If you have more then one process at a time hitting the drive, your speeds go through the floor. For home use, that may be ok. For a business, not so much. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
On Thu, August 26, 2010 13:58, Tom Buskey wrote:> I usually see 17 MB/s max on an external USB 2.0 drive.Interesting; I routinly see 27 MB/s peaking to 30 MB/s on the cheap WD 1TB external drives I use for backups. (Backup is probably best case, the only user of that drive is a zfs receive process.) -- 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