ZFS + iSCSI architecture
Hello, I am about to start deploying a large system (about 18 To which can grow up to 36 To) based on a big Intel platform with lot's of fancy features to have turbo boosted platform (ZIL on SSD + system on dongle if I go for FreeNAS). Since I want to move on quite fast I might decide to use FreeNAS in it's latest version. The idea behind all that was to grant 5 or six critical servers access to the NAS so that they can take advantage of : 1. space available on the NAS 2. ability of the NAS to use ZFS and of clients to support this file system (including snapshots) 3. Access the server using iSCSI (at least this is what I initially planned). 4. Mount part of their filesystem using data stored on the SAN (like /usr/local/ or other parts of the system). The server accessing the data will be of two types : 1. 2 x Ubuntu server 10.04 LTS 2. 4 x FreeBSD (mainly 8 and 9) with jail configured I have started reading about iSCSI and potential problems with FreeBSD. So my main questions would be : • Should I go for iSCSI ? • Should I rather choose / prefer NFS ? • Should I export a Volume as UFS rather than ZFS (is ZFS supported as a target) ? The main idea is stability, redundancy of data and ease of maintenance (in a headless FreeBSD / Linux world) before anything else ! That's the big pictures, if you have any pointers, advise, they are all welcome. It is quite late where I leave, so I will reply to posts in 8 to 10 hours, but I hope to have enough answer(s) to start an interesting thread (as I think this question is very interesting and not so clearly explained (at least in my mind))… Thx very much for your infos and feedback. «?»¥«?»§«?»¥«?»§«?»¥«?»§«?»¥«?»§«?»¥«?»§«?»¥«?»§ BSD - BSD - BSD - BSD - BSD - BSD - BSD - BSD - «?»¥«?»§«?»¥«?»§«?»¥«?»§«?»¥«?»§«?»¥«?»§«?»¥«?»§ PGP ID -- 0x1BA3C2FD ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: ZFS + iSCSI architecture
On 19-02-2013, Tue [23:20:41], b...@todoo.biz wrote: Hello, I am about to start deploying a large system (about 18 To which can grow up to 36 To) based on a big Intel platform with lot's of fancy features to have turbo boosted platform (ZIL on SSD + system on dongle if I go for FreeNAS). Since I want to move on quite fast I might decide to use FreeNAS in it's latest version. The idea behind all that was to grant 5 or six critical servers access to the NAS so that they can take advantage of : 1. space available on the NAS 2. ability of the NAS to use ZFS and of clients to support this file system (including snapshots) 3. Access the server using iSCSI (at least this is what I initially planned). 4. Mount part of their filesystem using data stored on the SAN (like /usr/local/ or other parts of the system). The server accessing the data will be of two types : 1. 2 x Ubuntu server 10.04 LTS 2. 4 x FreeBSD (mainly 8 and 9) with jail configured I have started reading about iSCSI and potential problems with FreeBSD. So my main questions would be : • Should I go for iSCSI ? • Should I rather choose / prefer NFS ? • Should I export a Volume as UFS rather than ZFS (is ZFS supported as a target) ? The main idea is stability, redundancy of data and ease of maintenance (in a headless FreeBSD / Linux world) before anything else ! That's the big pictures, if you have any pointers, advise, they are all welcome. It is quite late where I leave, so I will reply to posts in 8 to 10 hours, but I hope to have enough answer(s) to start an interesting thread (as I think this question is very interesting and not so clearly explained (at least in my mind))… Thx very much for your infos and feedback. Hello, If I needed a NFS+iSCSI solution I'd go for Solaris 11. Docs are abundant and the system is very stable and feature-rich. Tried recently the integration in Windows Domain and iSCSI features, all works wery good. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for FreeBSD ;) but in this particular case I'd choose Solaris. -- D.S. -\ Powered by ---o -/ FreeBSD ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: ZFS + iSCSI architecture
On Feb 19, 2013, at 11:20 PM, b...@todoo.biz b...@todoo.biz wrote: Hello, I am about to start deploying a large system (about 18 To which can grow up to 36 To) based on a big Intel platform with lot's of fancy features to have turbo boosted platform (ZIL on SSD + system on dongle if I go for FreeNAS). Since I want to move on quite fast I might decide to use FreeNAS in it's latest version. The idea behind all that was to grant 5 or six critical servers access to the NAS so that they can take advantage of : 1. space available on the NAS 2. ability of the NAS to use ZFS and of clients to support this file system (including snapshots) 3. Access the server using iSCSI (at least this is what I initially planned). 4. Mount part of their filesystem using data stored on the SAN (like /usr/local/ or other parts of the system). The server accessing the data will be of two types : 1. 2 x Ubuntu server 10.04 LTS 2. 4 x FreeBSD (mainly 8 and 9) with jail configured I have started reading about iSCSI and potential problems with FreeBSD. What problems do you mean ? So my main questions would be : • Should I go for iSCSI ? Well in all use cases, iscsi should perform faster than NFS. • Should I rather choose / prefer NFS ? • Should I export a Volume as UFS rather than ZFS (is ZFS supported as a target) ? I'm not sure what you mean here, when you export a zvol over ISCSI: - your SAN is the target and presents a block device (the zvol) - your client is the initiator - your client attaches to the ISCSI drive and formats it using filesystem XYZ, be it ext3, ufs or ntfs The main idea is stability, redundancy of data and ease of maintenance (in a headless FreeBSD / Linux world) before anything else ! ISCSI is a bit harder to setup IMO, however I think it''s more reliable than NFS, what with its auto retries if it loses the network link to a device. That's the big pictures, if you have any pointers, advise, they are all welcome. It is quite late where I leave, so I will reply to posts in 8 to 10 hours, but I hope to have enough answer(s) to start an interesting thread (as I think this question is very interesting and not so clearly explained (at least in my mind))… This is idd a very interesting topic and I hope to see more :) Thx very much for your infos and feedback. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: ZFS + iSCSI architecture
Sounds like a major headache. I'd just deploy NetApp with OnTap 8.X or isilon, both BSD based now. On Feb 19, 2013 7:15 PM, Fleuriot Damien m...@my.gd wrote: On Feb 19, 2013, at 11:20 PM, b...@todoo.biz b...@todoo.biz wrote: Hello, I am about to start deploying a large system (about 18 To which can grow up to 36 To) based on a big Intel platform with lot's of fancy features to have turbo boosted platform (ZIL on SSD + system on dongle if I go for FreeNAS). Since I want to move on quite fast I might decide to use FreeNAS in it's latest version. The idea behind all that was to grant 5 or six critical servers access to the NAS so that they can take advantage of : 1. space available on the NAS 2. ability of the NAS to use ZFS and of clients to support this file system (including snapshots) 3. Access the server using iSCSI (at least this is what I initially planned). 4. Mount part of their filesystem using data stored on the SAN (like /usr/local/ or other parts of the system). The server accessing the data will be of two types : 1. 2 x Ubuntu server 10.04 LTS 2. 4 x FreeBSD (mainly 8 and 9) with jail configured I have started reading about iSCSI and potential problems with FreeBSD. What problems do you mean ? So my main questions would be : • Should I go for iSCSI ? Well in all use cases, iscsi should perform faster than NFS. • Should I rather choose / prefer NFS ? • Should I export a Volume as UFS rather than ZFS (is ZFS supported as a target) ? I'm not sure what you mean here, when you export a zvol over ISCSI: - your SAN is the target and presents a block device (the zvol) - your client is the initiator - your client attaches to the ISCSI drive and formats it using filesystem XYZ, be it ext3, ufs or ntfs The main idea is stability, redundancy of data and ease of maintenance (in a headless FreeBSD / Linux world) before anything else ! ISCSI is a bit harder to setup IMO, however I think it''s more reliable than NFS, what with its auto retries if it loses the network link to a device. That's the big pictures, if you have any pointers, advise, they are all welcome. It is quite late where I leave, so I will reply to posts in 8 to 10 hours, but I hope to have enough answer(s) to start an interesting thread (as I think this question is very interesting and not so clearly explained (at least in my mind))… This is idd a very interesting topic and I hope to see more :) Thx very much for your infos and feedback. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: ZFS + iSCSI architecture
Le 20 févr. 2013 à 02:14, Fleuriot Damien m...@my.gd a écrit : On Feb 19, 2013, at 11:20 PM, b...@todoo.biz b...@todoo.biz wrote: Hello, I am about to start deploying a large system (about 18 To which can grow up to 36 To) based on a big Intel platform with lot's of fancy features to have turbo boosted platform (ZIL on SSD + system on dongle if I go for FreeNAS). Since I want to move on quite fast I might decide to use FreeNAS in it's latest version. The idea behind all that was to grant 5 or six critical servers access to the NAS so that they can take advantage of : 1. space available on the NAS 2. ability of the NAS to use ZFS and of clients to support this file system (including snapshots) 3. Access the server using iSCSI (at least this is what I initially planned). 4. Mount part of their filesystem using data stored on the SAN (like /usr/local/ or other parts of the system). The server accessing the data will be of two types : 1. 2 x Ubuntu server 10.04 LTS 2. 4 x FreeBSD (mainly 8 and 9) with jail configured I have started reading about iSCSI and potential problems with FreeBSD. What problems do you mean ? For example : - Can my client (the initiator) directly mount a ZFS volume on freeBSD using iSCSI or should I go back to formatting It to UFS ? - Is the iSCSI stack in FreeBSD stable an mature enough to be used in a production environment ? == It is out of scope to have kernel panic because of an unstable iSCSI related problem. So my main questions would be : • Should I go for iSCSI ? Well in all use cases, iscsi should perform faster than NFS. Fast is good - stable is necessary in this case ! And this is what I am tring to evaluate… • Should I rather choose / prefer NFS ? • Should I export a Volume as UFS rather than ZFS (is ZFS supported as a target) ? I'm not sure what you mean here, when you export a zvol over ISCSI: - your SAN is the target and presents a block device (the zvol) - your client is the initiator - your client attaches to the ISCSI drive and formats it using filesystem XYZ, be it ext3, ufs or ntfs Thanks for this reminder about vocabulary for iSCSI, I'll try to stick to It ;-) The main idea is stability, redundancy of data and ease of maintenance (in a headless FreeBSD / Linux world) before anything else ! ISCSI is a bit harder to setup IMO, however I think it''s more reliable than NFS, what with its auto retries if it loses the network link to a device. Have you deployed this in production and what are your concerns and recommendations ? That's the big pictures, if you have any pointers, advise, they are all welcome. It is quite late where I leave, so I will reply to posts in 8 to 10 hours, but I hope to have enough answer(s) to start an interesting thread (as I think this question is very interesting and not so clearly explained (at least in my mind))… This is idd a very interesting topic and I hope to see more :) There is also an interesting (and fresh) post here : http://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/solaris/ZFSFreeBSDvsIllumos?showcomments#comments Thx very much for your infos and feedback. «?»¥«?»§«?»¥«?»§«?»¥«?»§«?»¥«?»§«?»¥«?»§«?»¥«?»§ BSD - BSD - BSD - BSD - BSD - BSD - BSD - BSD - «?»¥«?»§«?»¥«?»§«?»¥«?»§«?»¥«?»§«?»¥«?»§«?»¥«?»§ PGP ID -- 0x1BA3C2FD ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
