Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Appliance as a general-purpose server question
On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 08:52:06AM +0100, Grégory Giannoni wrote: The LSI 9240-4I was not able to connect to the 25-drives bay ; Not tested LSI 9260-16I or LSI 9280-24i. What was the problem connecting LSI 9240-4i to the 25-drives bay? -- Pasi ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Appliance as a general-purpose server question
Le 29 nov. 2012 à 09:27, Pasi Kärkkäinen a écrit : The LSI 9240-4I was not able to connect to the 25-drives bay ; Not tested LSI 9260-16I or LSI 9280-24i. What was the problem connecting LSI 9240-4i to the 25-drives bay? The 25-drives backplane needs two SFF-8087 (multilane cables) to work correctly. The LSI 9240-4i has just one SFF-8087 port. Using 2 LSI 9240-4i didn't worked also. -- Grégory Giannoni http://www.wmaker.net ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Appliance as a general-purpose server question
On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 09:42:21AM +0100, Grégory Giannoni wrote: Le 29 nov. 2012 à 09:27, Pasi Kärkkäinen a écrit : The LSI 9240-4I was not able to connect to the 25-drives bay ; Not tested LSI 9260-16I or LSI 9280-24i. What was the problem connecting LSI 9240-4i to the 25-drives bay? The 25-drives backplane needs two SFF-8087 (multilane cables) to work correctly. The LSI 9240-4i has just one SFF-8087 port. Yeah, that explains :) -- Pasi Using 2 LSI 9240-4i didn't worked also. -- Grégory Giannoni http://www.wmaker.net ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Appliance as a general-purpose server question
On 11/27/12 1:52 AM, Grégory Giannoni s...@narguile.org wrote: Le 27 nov. 2012 à 01:17, Erik Trimble a écrit : On 11/26/2012 12:54 PM, Grégory Giannoni wrote: [snip] I switched few month ago from Sun X45x0 to HP things : My fast NAS are now DL 180 G6. I got better perfs using LSI 9240-8I rather than HP SmartArray (tried P410 P812). I'm using only 600Gb SSD drives. That LSI controllers supports SATA III, or 6Gbps SATA. The Px1x controllers do 6GB SAS, but only 3GB SATA, so that's your likely perf difference. The SmartArray Px2x series should do both SATA and SAS at 6Gbps. The SSD drives I'm using (Intel 320 600GB) are limited to 270MB/sec ; So I don't think that SATA II is limiting. That said, I do think you're right that the LSI controller is probably a better fit for connections requiring a SATA SSD. The only exception is having to give up the 1GB of NVRAM on the HP controller. :-( I don't think that this is a real issue when using a bunch of SSDs. I even wonder if the NVRAM is not slowing down writings. My tests were done with ZIL enabled, so a power loss shouldn't damage the datas. HP recommends to disable the write accelerator on SSD-only volumes. http://h2.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=encc=us taskId=120prodSeriesId=3802118prodTypeId=329290objectID=c02963968 [...] Is the bottleneck the LSI controller, or the SAS/SATA bus, or the PCI-E bus itself? That is, have you tested with LSI 9240-4i (one per 8-drive cage, which I *believe* can use the HP multi-lane cable), and with a LSI 9260-16i or LSI 9280-24i? My instinct would be to say it's the PCI-E bus, and you could probably get away with the 4-channel cards. i.e. 4-channels @ 6Gbit/s = 3 GBytes/s 4x PCI-E 2.0 at 2GB/s The first bottleneck we reached (DL 180 / standard 25 drives bay) was the HP controller (both P410 AND P812 reached the same perfs : 800MB/sec writing, 1.3GB/sec reading). With LSI 9240-8I, we reached 1.2GB/s writing, 1.3Gb/s reading. The LSI 9240-4I was not able to connect to the 25-drives bay ; Not tested LSI 9260-16I or LSI 9280-24i. The results were the same with 10 or 25 drives, so I suspected either the PCI bus, either the expander in the 25-drives bay (HP 530946-001). Plugging the disks directly to the LSI card allowed to gain few MB/s : the expander was limiting a bit, but moreover, it disallowed to use more than 1 disk controller ! By replacing the 25-drives bay by three 8-drives bays (507803-B21), the system was able to use 3 LSI 9240-8I, with this 4.4GB/sec reading rate. That's correct that you've run into the limitation of the expander on the 25-disk drive backplane. However, I'm curious about the 8-drive cage you mention. I use that cage in the ML/DL370 G6 servers. I didn't think it would fit into a DL180 G6. How is this arranged in your unit? What does the resulting setup look like? Sine the DL180 drive cages are part of the bezel, do you just have three loose cages connected to the controllers? Also, with three controllers, didn't you max the number of available PCIe slots? Anyway, the new HP SL4540 server is the next product worth testing in this realmŠ 60 x LFF disks. http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/14406_na/14406_na.html -- Edmund White ewwh...@mac.com ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Appliance as a general-purpose server question
[...] The results were the same with 10 or 25 drives, so I suspected either the PCI bus, either the expander in the 25-drives bay (HP 530946-001). Plugging the disks directly to the LSI card allowed to gain few MB/s : the expander was limiting a bit, but moreover, it disallowed to use more than 1 disk controller ! [...] That's correct that you've run into the limitation of the expander on the 25-disk drive backplane. However, I'm curious about the 8-drive cage you mention. I use that cage in the ML/DL370 G6 servers. I didn't think it would fit into a DL180 G6. How is this arranged in your unit? What does the resulting setup look like? Sine the DL180 drive cages are part of the bezel, do you just have three loose cages connected to the controllers? It was not as easy that just unplug the 25-drives bay and plus 3 8 drives-bays.. Few rivets to drill, backplane alimentation cable to trick (the pins and wires colors are not the same !), minimolex - molex cable the drives alimentation, and some screw to fix the cages. The result is really clean. Here are few pictures : http://www.flickr.com/photos/webzinemaker/6964036523/in/photostream/ Also, with three controllers, didn't you max the number of available PCIe slots? 4 slots are available on the DL180 : 3 were used for the LSI controllers, and one for a nic. Anyway, the new HP SL4540 server is the next product worth testing in this realmŠ 60 x LFF disks. http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/14406_na/14406_na.html I might be a very good alternative for the X4540... But I wonder how many controllers are connected, and what are their perfs. -- Grégory Giannoni http://www.wmaker.net ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Appliance as a general-purpose server question
I am in the market for something newer than that, though. Anyone know what HP's using as a replacement for the DL320s? I have no idea... but they have dl380 Gen8 with a disk plane supporting 25x 2.5 disks (all in front), and it is Sandy Bridge based. Oracle/Sun have X3-2L - 24x 2.5 disks in front, another 2x 2.5 in rear, Sandy Bridge as well. -- Robert Milkowski http://milek.blogspot.com ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Appliance as a general-purpose server question
Le 24 nov. 2012 à 03:51, Erik Trimble a écrit : This is what we decided to do at work, and this is the reason why. But we didn't buy the appliance-branded boxes; we just bought normal servers running solaris. I gave up and am now buying HP-branded hardware for running Solaris on it. Particularly if you get off-lease used hardware (for which, HP is still very happy to let you buy a HW support contract), it's cheap, and HP has a lot of Solaris drivers for their branded stuff. Their whole SmartArray line of adapters has much better Solaris driver coverage than the generic stuff or the equivalent IBM or Dell items. For instance, I just got a couple of DL380 G5 systems with dual Harpertown CPUs, fully loaded with 8 2.5 SAS drives and 32GB of RAM, for about $800 total. You can attach their MSA30/50/70-series (or DS2700-series, if you want new) as dumb JBODs via SAS, and the nice SmartArray controllers have 1GB of NVRAM, which is sufficient for many purposes, so you don't even have cough up the dough for a nice ZIL SSD. HP even made a sweet little appliance thing that was designed for Windows, but happens to run Solaris really, really well. The DL320s (the s is part of the model designation). 14x 3.5 SAS/SATA hot swap bays, a Xeon 3070 dual-core CPU, SmartArray controller, 2 x GB Nic, LOM, and a free 1x PCI-E expansion slot. The only drawback is that it only takes up to 8GB of RAM. It makes a *fabulous* little backup system for logs and stuff, and it's under about $2000 even after you splurge for 1TB drives and an SSD for the thing. I am in the market for something newer than that, though. Anyone know what HP's using as a replacement for the DL320s? I switched few month ago from Sun X45x0 to HP things : My fast NAS are now DL 180 G6. I got better perfs using LSI 9240-8I rather than HP SmartArray (tried P410 P812). I'm using only 600Gb SSD drives. In one of the servers I replaced the 25-disks bays by 3 8-disks bays, allowing me to connect 3 LSI 9240-8I rather than only one. This NAS achieved 4.4GBytes/sec reading and 4.1GBytes/Sec writing with 48 io/s, running Solaris 11. Using raidz-2, perfs dropped to 3.1 / 3.0 GB/sec For mass storage, I'm still using my olds X4500 and X4540 with 2TB drives and few SSDs. Lot of problems with Seagate 2TB drives in X4540 / None in the X4500. Have no replacement yet (I'll soon try some super-micro hardware). -- Grégory Giannoni http://www.wmaker.net ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Appliance as a general-purpose server question
On 11/26/2012 12:54 PM, Grégory Giannoni wrote: [snip] I switched few month ago from Sun X45x0 to HP things : My fast NAS are now DL 180 G6. I got better perfs using LSI 9240-8I rather than HP SmartArray (tried P410 P812). I'm using only 600Gb SSD drives. That LSI controllers supports SATA III, or 6Gbps SATA. The Px1x controllers do 6GB SAS, but only 3GB SATA, so that's your likely perf difference. The SmartArray Px2x series should do both SATA and SAS at 6Gbps. That said, I do think you're right that the LSI controller is probably a better fit for connections requiring a SATA SSD. The only exception is having to give up the 1GB of NVRAM on the HP controller. :-( In one of the servers I replaced the 25-disks bays by 3 8-disks bays, allowing me to connect 3 LSI 9240-8I rather than only one. This NAS achieved 4.4GBytes/sec reading and 4.1GBytes/Sec writing with 48 io/s, running Solaris 11. Using raidz-2, perfs dropped to 3.1 / 3.0 GB/sec Is the bottleneck the LSI controller, or the SAS/SATA bus, or the PCI-E bus itself? That is, have you tested with LSI 9240-4i (one per 8-drive cage, which I *believe* can use the HP multi-lane cable), and with a LSI 9260-16i or LSI 9280-24i? My instinct would be to say it's the PCI-E bus, and you could probably get away with the 4-channel cards. i.e. 4-channels @ 6Gbit/s = 3 GBytes/s 4x PCI-E 2.0 at 2GB/s Also, the HP H220 is simply the OEM version of the LSI 9240-8i -Erik ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Appliance as a general-purpose server question
Le 27 nov. 2012 à 01:17, Erik Trimble a écrit : On 11/26/2012 12:54 PM, Grégory Giannoni wrote: [snip] I switched few month ago from Sun X45x0 to HP things : My fast NAS are now DL 180 G6. I got better perfs using LSI 9240-8I rather than HP SmartArray (tried P410 P812). I'm using only 600Gb SSD drives. That LSI controllers supports SATA III, or 6Gbps SATA. The Px1x controllers do 6GB SAS, but only 3GB SATA, so that's your likely perf difference. The SmartArray Px2x series should do both SATA and SAS at 6Gbps. The SSD drives I'm using (Intel 320 600GB) are limited to 270MB/sec ; So I don't think that SATA II is limiting. That said, I do think you're right that the LSI controller is probably a better fit for connections requiring a SATA SSD. The only exception is having to give up the 1GB of NVRAM on the HP controller. :-( I don't think that this is a real issue when using a bunch of SSDs. I even wonder if the NVRAM is not slowing down writings. My tests were done with ZIL enabled, so a power loss shouldn't damage the datas. [...] Is the bottleneck the LSI controller, or the SAS/SATA bus, or the PCI-E bus itself? That is, have you tested with LSI 9240-4i (one per 8-drive cage, which I *believe* can use the HP multi-lane cable), and with a LSI 9260-16i or LSI 9280-24i? My instinct would be to say it's the PCI-E bus, and you could probably get away with the 4-channel cards. i.e. 4-channels @ 6Gbit/s = 3 GBytes/s 4x PCI-E 2.0 at 2GB/s The first bottleneck we reached (DL 180 / standard 25 drives bay) was the HP controller (both P410 AND P812 reached the same perfs : 800MB/sec writing, 1.3GB/sec reading). With LSI 9240-8I, we reached 1.2GB/s writing, 1.3Gb/s reading. The LSI 9240-4I was not able to connect to the 25-drives bay ; Not tested LSI 9260-16I or LSI 9280-24i. The results were the same with 10 or 25 drives, so I suspected either the PCI bus, either the expander in the 25-drives bay (HP 530946-001). Plugging the disks directly to the LSI card allowed to gain few MB/s : the expander was limiting a bit, but moreover, it disallowed to use more than 1 disk controller ! By replacing the 25-drives bay by three 8-drives bays (507803-B21), the system was able to use 3 LSI 9240-8I, with this 4.4GB/sec reading rate. -- Grégory Giannoni http://www.wmaker.net ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Appliance as a general-purpose server question
Heh, I wouldn't be using G5's for ZFS purposes now. G6 and better ProLiants are a better deal for RAM capacity and CPU core countŠ Either way, I also use HP systems as the basis for my ZFS/Nexenta storage systems. Typically DL380's, since I have expansion room for either 16 drive bays, or for using them as a head unit to a D2700 or D2600 JBOD. The right replacement for the old DL320s storage server is the DL180 G6. This model was available in a number of configurations, but the best solutions for storage were the 2U 12-bay 3.5 model and the 2U 25-bay 2.5 model. Both models have a SAS expander on the backplane, but with a nice controller (LSI 9211-4i), make good ZFS storage servers. -- Edmund White On 11/23/12 8:51 PM, Erik Trimble tr...@netdemons.com wrote: On 11/23/2012 5:50 AM, Edward Ned Harvey (opensolarisisdeadlongliveopensolaris) wrote: From: zfs-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss- boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Jim Klimov I wonder if it would make weird sense to get the boxes, forfeit the cool-looking Fishworks, and install Solaris/OI/Nexenta/whatever to get the most flexibility and bang for a buck from the owned hardware... This is what we decided to do at work, and this is the reason why. But we didn't buy the appliance-branded boxes; we just bought normal servers running solaris. I gave up and am now buying HP-branded hardware for running Solaris on it. Particularly if you get off-lease used hardware (for which, HP is still very happy to let you buy a HW support contract), it's cheap, and HP has a lot of Solaris drivers for their branded stuff. Their whole SmartArray line of adapters has much better Solaris driver coverage than the generic stuff or the equivalent IBM or Dell items. For instance, I just got a couple of DL380 G5 systems with dual Harpertown CPUs, fully loaded with 8 2.5 SAS drives and 32GB of RAM, for about $800 total. You can attach their MSA30/50/70-series (or DS2700-series, if you want new) as dumb JBODs via SAS, and the nice SmartArray controllers have 1GB of NVRAM, which is sufficient for many purposes, so you don't even have cough up the dough for a nice ZIL SSD. HP even made a sweet little appliance thing that was designed for Windows, but happens to run Solaris really, really well. The DL320s (the s is part of the model designation). 14x 3.5 SAS/SATA hot swap bays, a Xeon 3070 dual-core CPU, SmartArray controller, 2 x GB Nic, LOM, and a free 1x PCI-E expansion slot. The only drawback is that it only takes up to 8GB of RAM. It makes a *fabulous* little backup system for logs and stuff, and it's under about $2000 even after you splurge for 1TB drives and an SSD for the thing. I am in the market for something newer than that, though. Anyone know what HP's using as a replacement for the DL320s? -Erik ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Appliance as a general-purpose server question
On 11/24/2012 5:17 AM, Edmund White wrote: Heh, I wouldn't be using G5's for ZFS purposes now. G6 and better ProLiants are a better deal for RAM capacity and CPU core countŠ Either way, I also use HP systems as the basis for my ZFS/Nexenta storage systems. Typically DL380's, since I have expansion room for either 16 drive bays, or for using them as a head unit to a D2700 or D2600 JBOD. The right replacement for the old DL320s storage server is the DL180 G6. This model was available in a number of configurations, but the best solutions for storage were the 2U 12-bay 3.5 model and the 2U 25-bay 2.5 model. Both models have a SAS expander on the backplane, but with a nice controller (LSI 9211-4i), make good ZFS storage servers. Really? I mean, sure, the G6 is beefier, but I can still get 8 cores of decently-fast CPU and 64GB of RAM in a G5, which, unless I'm doing Dedup and need a *stupid* amount of RAM, is more than sufficient for anything I've ever seen as a ZFS appliance. I'd agree that the 64GB of RAM limit can be annoying if you really want to run a Super App Server + ZFS server on them, but they're so much more powerful than the X4500/X4540 that I'd think they make an excellent drop-in replacement when paired with an MSA70, particularly on cost. The G6 is over double the cost of the G5. One thing that I do know about the G6 is that they have Nehalem CPUS (X5500-series), which support VT-D, the virtualization I/O acceleration technology from Intel, while the G5's X5400-series Harpertown's don't. If you're running zones on the system, it won't matter, but VirtualBox will care. --- Thanks for the DL180 link. Once again, I think I'd go for the G5 rather than the G6 - it's roughly half the cost (or less, as the 2.5-enabled G6s seem to be expensive), and these boxes make nice log servers, not app servers. The DL180 G5 seems to be pretty much a DL380 G5 with a different hard drive layout (12x2.5 rather than 8x2.5) --- One word here for everyone getting HP equipment: you want to get the Px1x or Px2x (e.g. P812) series of SmartArray controllers, if you plan on running SATA drives attached to them. The older Px0x series only supports SATA I (1.5GB/s) and SAS 3GB/s, which is a serious handicap if you want to do SSDs on that channel. The newer series do SATA II (3GB/s) and SAS 6Gb/s. http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliantstorage/arraycontrollers/index.html -Erik ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Appliance as a general-purpose server question
On 11/24/12 5:51 PM, Erik Trimble tr...@netdemons.com wrote: On 11/24/2012 5:17 AM, Edmund White wrote: Heh, I wouldn't be using G5's for ZFS purposes now. G6 and better ProLiants are a better deal for RAM capacity and CPU core countŠ Either way, I also use HP systems as the basis for my ZFS/Nexenta storage systems. Typically DL380's, since I have expansion room for either 16 drive bays, or for using them as a head unit to a D2700 or D2600 JBOD. The right replacement for the old DL320s storage server is the DL180 G6. This model was available in a number of configurations, but the best solutions for storage were the 2U 12-bay 3.5 model and the 2U 25-bay 2.5 model. Both models have a SAS expander on the backplane, but with a nice controller (LSI 9211-4i), make good ZFS storage servers. Really? I mean, sure, the G6 is beefier, but I can still get 8 cores of decently-fast CPU and 64GB of RAM in a G5, which, unless I'm doing Dedup and need a *stupid* amount of RAM, is more than sufficient for anything I've ever seen as a ZFS appliance. I'd agree that the 64GB of RAM limit can be annoying if you really want to run a Super App Server + ZFS server on them, but they're so much more powerful than the X4500/X4540 that I'd think they make an excellent drop-in replacement when paired with an MSA70, particularly on cost. The G6 is over double the cost of the G5. My X4540 wasn't lacking in power... Just the annoyance of SATA drive timeouts. Regardless, recommending a G5 ProLiant nowadays is a bad deal. I've nearly replaced all of the G5 units I installed between 2006 and 2009. You're limited to 3G SAS and the constrained (super $$$) RAM supply is an issue. One thing that I do know about the G6 is that they have Nehalem CPUS (X5500-series), which support VT-D, the virtualization I/O acceleration technology from Intel, while the G5's X5400-series Harpertown's don't. If you're running zones on the system, it won't matter, but VirtualBox will care. VT-D can be handy. As can HyperThreading, *moar* RAM, DirectPath, etc. Thanks for the DL180 link. Once again, I think I'd go for the G5 rather than the G6 - it's roughly half the cost (or less, as the 2.5-enabled G6s seem to be expensive), and these boxes make nice log servers, not app servers. The DL180 G5 seems to be pretty much a DL380 G5 with a different hard drive layout (12x2.5 rather than 8x2.5) While there is a DL180 G5, the DL180 G6 is the right recommendation because it fixes a lot of the ugly issues present in the G5. The 180 G5 platform is nothing like the DL380 G5. Different system boards, backplane, management. Not sure where you're looking, but eBay and a couple of the HP liquidators are good sources for these systems. E.g. http://r.ebay.com/p0xrLu -- Edmund White ewwh...@mac.com ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Appliance as a general-purpose server question
From: zfs-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss- boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Jim Klimov I wonder if it would make weird sense to get the boxes, forfeit the cool-looking Fishworks, and install Solaris/OI/Nexenta/whatever to get the most flexibility and bang for a buck from the owned hardware... This is what we decided to do at work, and this is the reason why. But we didn't buy the appliance-branded boxes; we just bought normal servers running solaris. ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Appliance as a general-purpose server question
On 11/23/2012 5:50 AM, Edward Ned Harvey (opensolarisisdeadlongliveopensolaris) wrote: From: zfs-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss- boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Jim Klimov I wonder if it would make weird sense to get the boxes, forfeit the cool-looking Fishworks, and install Solaris/OI/Nexenta/whatever to get the most flexibility and bang for a buck from the owned hardware... This is what we decided to do at work, and this is the reason why. But we didn't buy the appliance-branded boxes; we just bought normal servers running solaris. I gave up and am now buying HP-branded hardware for running Solaris on it. Particularly if you get off-lease used hardware (for which, HP is still very happy to let you buy a HW support contract), it's cheap, and HP has a lot of Solaris drivers for their branded stuff. Their whole SmartArray line of adapters has much better Solaris driver coverage than the generic stuff or the equivalent IBM or Dell items. For instance, I just got a couple of DL380 G5 systems with dual Harpertown CPUs, fully loaded with 8 2.5 SAS drives and 32GB of RAM, for about $800 total. You can attach their MSA30/50/70-series (or DS2700-series, if you want new) as dumb JBODs via SAS, and the nice SmartArray controllers have 1GB of NVRAM, which is sufficient for many purposes, so you don't even have cough up the dough for a nice ZIL SSD. HP even made a sweet little appliance thing that was designed for Windows, but happens to run Solaris really, really well. The DL320s (the s is part of the model designation). 14x 3.5 SAS/SATA hot swap bays, a Xeon 3070 dual-core CPU, SmartArray controller, 2 x GB Nic, LOM, and a free 1x PCI-E expansion slot. The only drawback is that it only takes up to 8GB of RAM. It makes a *fabulous* little backup system for logs and stuff, and it's under about $2000 even after you splurge for 1TB drives and an SSD for the thing. I am in the market for something newer than that, though. Anyone know what HP's using as a replacement for the DL320s? -Erik ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
[zfs-discuss] ZFS Appliance as a general-purpose server question
A customer is looking to replace or augment their Sun Thumper with a ZFS appliance like 7320. However, the Thumper was used not only as a protocol storage server (home dirs, files, backups over NFS/CIFS/Rsync), but also as a general-purpose server with unpredictably-big-data programs running directly on it (such as corporate databases, Alfresco for intellectual document storage, etc.) in order to avoid the networking transfer of such data between pure-storage and compute nodes - this networking was seen as both a bottleneck and a possible point of failure. Is it possible to use the ZFS Storage appliances in a similar way, and fire up a Solaris zone (or a few) directly on the box for general-purpose software; or to shell-script administrative tasks such as the backup archive management in the global zone (if that concept still applies) as is done on their current Solaris-based box? Is it possible to run VirtualBoxes in the ZFS-SA OS, dare I ask? ;) Thanks, //Jim Klimov ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Appliance as a general-purpose server question
On 11/22/12 16:24, Jim Klimov wrote: A customer is looking to replace or augment their Sun Thumper with a ZFS appliance like 7320. However, the Thumper was used not only as a protocol storage server (home dirs, files, backups over NFS/CIFS/Rsync), but also as a general-purpose server with unpredictably-big-data programs running directly on it (such as corporate databases, Alfresco for intellectual document storage, etc.) in order to avoid the networking transfer of such data between pure-storage and compute nodes - this networking was seen as both a bottleneck and a possible point of failure. Is it possible to use the ZFS Storage appliances in a similar way, and fire up a Solaris zone (or a few) directly on the box for general-purpose software; or to shell-script administrative tasks such as the backup archive management in the global zone (if that concept still applies) as is done on their current Solaris-based box? No it is a true appliance, it might look like it has Solaris underneath but it is just based on Solaris. You can script administrative tasks but not using bash/ksh style scripting you use the ZFSSA's own scripting language. Is it possible to run VirtualBoxes in the ZFS-SA OS, dare I ask? ;) No. -- Darren J Moffat ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Appliance as a general-purpose server question
On 2012-11-22 17:31, Darren J Moffat wrote: Is it possible to use the ZFS Storage appliances in a similar way, and fire up a Solaris zone (or a few) directly on the box for general-purpose software; or to shell-script administrative tasks such as the backup archive management in the global zone (if that concept still applies) as is done on their current Solaris-based box? No it is a true appliance, it might look like it has Solaris underneath but it is just based on Solaris. You can script administrative tasks but not using bash/ksh style scripting you use the ZFSSA's own scripting language. So, the only supported (or even possible) way is indeed to us it as NAS for file or block IO from another head running the database or application servers?.. In the Datasheet I read that Cloning and Remote replication are separately licensed features; does this mean that the capability for zfs send|zfs recv backups from remote Solaris systems should be purchased separately? :( I wonder if it would make weird sense to get the boxes, forfeit the cool-looking Fishworks, and install Solaris/OI/Nexenta/whatever to get the most flexibility and bang for a buck from the owned hardware... Or, rather, shop for the equivalent non-appliance servers... //Jim ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Appliance as a general-purpose server question
On Thu, Nov 22, 2012 at 10:50 AM, Jim Klimov jimkli...@cos.ru wrote: On 2012-11-22 17:31, Darren J Moffat wrote: Is it possible to use the ZFS Storage appliances in a similar way, and fire up a Solaris zone (or a few) directly on the box for general-purpose software; or to shell-script administrative tasks such as the backup archive management in the global zone (if that concept still applies) as is done on their current Solaris-based box? No it is a true appliance, it might look like it has Solaris underneath but it is just based on Solaris. You can script administrative tasks but not using bash/ksh style scripting you use the ZFSSA's own scripting language. So, the only supported (or even possible) way is indeed to us it as NAS for file or block IO from another head running the database or application servers?.. In the Datasheet I read that Cloning and Remote replication are separately licensed features; does this mean that the capability for zfs send|zfs recv backups from remote Solaris systems should be purchased separately? :( I wonder if it would make weird sense to get the boxes, forfeit the cool-looking Fishworks, and install Solaris/OI/Nexenta/whatever to get the most flexibility and bang for a buck from the owned hardware... Or, rather, shop for the equivalent non-appliance servers... //Jim You'd be paying a massive premium to buy them and then install some other OS on them. You'd be far better off buying equivalent servers. --Tim ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Appliance as a general-purpose server question
On 11/23/12 05:50, Jim Klimov wrote: On 2012-11-22 17:31, Darren J Moffat wrote: Is it possible to use the ZFS Storage appliances in a similar way, and fire up a Solaris zone (or a few) directly on the box for general-purpose software; or to shell-script administrative tasks such as the backup archive management in the global zone (if that concept still applies) as is done on their current Solaris-based box? No it is a true appliance, it might look like it has Solaris underneath but it is just based on Solaris. You can script administrative tasks but not using bash/ksh style scripting you use the ZFSSA's own scripting language. So, the only supported (or even possible) way is indeed to us it as NAS for file or block IO from another head running the database or application servers?.. Yes. I wonder if it would make weird sense to get the boxes, forfeit the cool-looking Fishworks, and install Solaris/OI/Nexenta/whatever to get the most flexibility and bang for a buck from the owned hardware... Or, rather, shop for the equivalent non-appliance servers... As Tim Cook says, that would be a very expensive option. I'm sure Oracle dropped the Thumper line because they competed head on with the appliances and gave way more flexibility. If you are experienced with Solaris and ZFS, you will find using appliances very frustrating! You can't use the OS as you would like and you have to go through support when you would other wise fix things yourself. In my part of the world, that isn't much fun. Buy and equivalent JBOD and head unit and pretend you have a new Thumper. -- Ian. ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS Appliance as a general-purpose server question
So, the only supported (or even possible) way is indeed to us it as NAS for file or block IO from another head running the database or application servers?.. Technically speaking you can get access to standard shell and do whatever you want - this would essentially void support contract though. -- Robert Milkowski http://milek.blogspot.com ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
