Hi, this is going to be a long and rambling email from someone who has yet to even use Illumos or it's derivatives.
In my home I run a mixed mode environment consisting of old PPC era OS9 and OS X machines, a couple of Linux boxes and a lot more Windows gaming machines ranging from 98 to Windows 7. My server is running a copy of Server 2008 R2 on Vista-era hardware. It is this latter which concerns me. At present the server performs certain roles. It is the Primary DHCP and DNS server on the network, file server, Minecraft server for 4 users and runs Server 2003 in Hyper-V for the old legacy computers. In terms of hardware it runs on a Phenom 9550 with 6Gb ECC DDR2 800MHz RAM, a Geforce 8400GS, 4x 500Gb Hitachi Hard drives on an old Dell CERC 2610SA RAID adaptor (Hardware RAID 1) and 2 1Tb Samsung drives using the onboard SATA controller and Software RAID 1. The motherboard is an ASUS M3N WS and the onboard dual GB NICs are teamed. In all honesty I never did what I intended to do with this machine and have never been completely satisfied with Windows as a Server operating system. I am completely sold on the idea of ZFS but still know an appallingly small amount, and I am beginning to lean towards the idea of using OpenIndiana as the server's operating system but frankly, I'm scared witless that transferring data from the NTFS volumes to ZFS may result in loss of said data. So I would like to discuss my plans, which won't be implemented for a while yet until my research and acquisitions are complete. I intend to rehouse the system into a new and better chassis, remove the Geforce 8400GS and rely instead on the onboard 8200 and to under-clock and under-volt the processor, maybe down to 1.8GHz which I believe should still be fast enough. There's no question of changing the base hardware configuration as there simply isn't enough in the budget to allow for that. However, I do have a pair of 2Tb Hitachi coolspin drives that were bought for the server last year and have thus far not been used. I intend to retire at least 2 of the 500Gb drives that have been in continual operation since 2007 but lacking the money for new drives I'll likely be keeping the newer ones in operation, probably for use as OS drives. Given the disparity in sizes, I am of the opinion that the current arrangement of 3 RAID 1 arrays are the best way to go, but I am willing to stump up the cash for a smallish SSD to use as an L2ARC drive, maybe 60Gb. While the server is down, I intend to setup an even older machine as a secondary server using NAS4Free or possibly ClearOS. This is an Opteron 165 with 2Gb ECC DDR 400 RAM, a Radeon HD3650, single GB NIC and a 250Gb and 400Gb Hard disk drives. The 250Gb will house a desktop OS (such as Linux Mint Debian) and the 400Gb drive will be used to hold commonly accessed files needed while the main server is down. So finally to what I want to know. Does this sound not just feasible, be sensible given the resources and know-how at my disposal? I have a certain familiarity with Linux and had been considering ClearOS as a replacement server OS simply because I like the idea of managing the server from a webpage. However, OpenIndiana is probably more flexible and crucially offers native support for ZFS. I would still want to team the NICs, it would still have to play ball as a minecraft server, DHCP and DNS server and obviously file server capabilities are paramount. I am perfectly willing to learn how to manage the machine via SSH instead of a webpage and I'm not afraid of the command line. It would be a serious bonus if older Windows and Mac clients could view the shares as well, or if a legacy share could be established for them. I will be using virtual machines as test beds to learn what can be done but I think I need the opinion of experienced users before I make too many plans. Many thanks, Andrew ------------------------------------------- illumos-discuss Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/182180/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/182180/21175430-2e6923be Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21175430&id_secret=21175430-6a77cda4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
