Bob La Quey wrote:
Because ZFS runs on the "main" processor not some peripheral processor on a disk controller it will cause a hit on the "main" processor ... but the advantage of that is the "main" processor is far more likely, because of economies of scale and competition, to be far faster than the cpus used in the disk controller. Disk controllers are less likely than motherboards to contain the latest technology.
Um, and there is no reason why you can't just create a cabinet in which the "main" processor *is* the "disk" processor.
Once you toss out the RAID hardware you have both a simpler and a less expensive system. Nothing but a bunch of disks. This will almost certainly be more reliable than hardware RAID. ZFS provides _all_ the data integrity needed.
More reliable? Not necessarily true. In reality, the fact the ZFS checksums everything from start to finish buys you that irrespective of the underlying implementation layer.
The big advantage is that ZFS RAID trades some performance (write barrier by readback and verify) for hardware. That puts the "inexpensive" back in RAID again.
-a -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
