Re: [gentoo-user] Re: homemade nas setup
Harry Putnam wrote: Matt Harrison iwasinnamuk...@genestate.com writes: I know its a little OT, but I have to mention ZFS. It'll mean running Solaris or FreeBSD in order to get the best out of it, but it's worth it. I changed my fileserver from a gentoo box with software raid and lvm over to ZFS on OpenSolaris and I haven't looked back. Gentoo is still my main OS but I think you just can't beat ZFS for a filer. Matt, I'm interested in quizzing you further on this so will ask the main question here. But, if you don't mind I'd like to talk to you off list at more length. Maybe a few pointer getting Opensolaris setup with the ZFS or the like. Are you backing up any windows boxes onto the ZFS? Is it just a matter of making it available by way of samba/cifs? I'm using it for both attached storage via ISCSI, and standard sharing on a domain via cifs. I've got backups running from linux and windows boxes onto it. Your list email address looks like it might be a phony (I didn't try it) but mine isn't so if you don't mind the personal contact please let me know and I'll write direct. Well I didn't realise my address looked fake :P It is real and I'd be happy to try and answer your questions to the best of my ability. Matt
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: homemade nas setup
Harry Putnam schrieb: Norman Rieß nor...@smash-net.org writes: Is it connected into 10/100 or 1000 (gigabit) setup? It is a gigabit setup. NFS read is about 30-34MB/s, writing is considerably slower with 15MB/s. So writing is a bit slow. But as i do not need fast storage i did not investigate. And it must be mentioned, that the whole data is in AES. Being AES should have a pretty dramatic impact right? or is it not decrypted and just bounced from one place to another? Yes AES has some impact. These are the speeds with de/encryption.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: homemade nas setup
On Friday 30 January 2009 18:30:41 Harry Putnam wrote: Peter Humphrey pe...@humphrey.ukfsn.org writes: I just bought a USB hard disk and plug it into whichever box I want to back up. Each box has a small rescue system, which I boot into to make the backup to ensure that all files are copied. Just a simple tar command, without compression for speed. Well, that isn't even close to nas... but thanks. No, of course not, and what's more it denies you the fun of getting another gizmo working, but for simplicity it's hard to beat. For my purposes, anyway. -- Rgds Peter
[gentoo-user] Re: homemade nas setup
Matt Harrison iwasinnamuk...@genestate.com writes: Are you backing up any windows boxes onto the ZFS? Is it just a matter of making it available by way of samba/cifs? I'm using it for both attached storage via ISCSI, and standard sharing on a domain via cifs. I've got backups running from linux and windows boxes onto it. Ahh sounds like what I'd be doing. Although I'm not really sure what you mean by `via ISCSI' (a scsi transport?) Your list email address looks like it might be a phony (I didn't try it) but mine isn't so if you don't mind the personal contact please let me know and I'll write direct. Well I didn't realise my address looked fake :P It is real and I'd be happy to try and answer your questions to the best of my ability. Hehe... no slam intended... some people do obfuscate there email on lists such as this, and yours is somewhat unusual looking. I've had people say the same thing about mine... `newsguy' sounds kind of made up. (True story =) It used to be `zippo.com' some yrs ago but they were sued by the famous `Zippo' lighter people and had to change the name. They picked the silly name `newsguy'.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: homemade nas setup
Harry Putnam wrote: Matt Harrison iwasinnamuk...@genestate.com writes: Are you backing up any windows boxes onto the ZFS? Is it just a matter of making it available by way of samba/cifs? I'm using it for both attached storage via ISCSI, and standard sharing on a domain via cifs. I've got backups running from linux and windows boxes onto it. Ahh sounds like what I'd be doing. Although I'm not really sure what you mean by `via ISCSI' (a scsi transport?) iSCSI is kinda like ATA over ethernet, it allows you to attach a disk to a system, over the network, but have it appear like a local disk. For example, I have a windows 2003 domain controller that doesn't have much space for storing roaming profiles etc. So I attached a disk to it via iSCSI (in fact it is only a ZFS dataset, not a whole disk), windows sees it as a local SCSI disk and lets me format it with NTFS and use it for local storage. try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISCSI Your list email address looks like it might be a phony (I didn't try it) but mine isn't so if you don't mind the personal contact please let me know and I'll write direct. Well I didn't realise my address looked fake :P It is real and I'd be happy to try and answer your questions to the best of my ability. Hehe... no slam intended... some people do obfuscate there email on lists such as this, and yours is somewhat unusual looking. I've had people say the same thing about mine... `newsguy' sounds kind of made up. (True story =) It used to be `zippo.com' some yrs ago but they were sued by the famous `Zippo' lighter people and had to change the name. They picked the silly name `newsguy'. No offense taken, i was just surprised :) Feel free to email me off-list if you want to talk ZFS etc, I'll be happy to answer what I can or point you to the people that know all ;) Matt
[gentoo-user] Re: homemade nas setup
Peter Humphrey pe...@humphrey.ukfsn.org writes: On Friday 30 January 2009 00:06:05 Harry Putnam wrote: I've been looking into setting up or getting somekind of nas storage/backup capability lately so thought I'd ask about it here since I'm sure some of you will be using something or will have built your own. I just bought a USB hard disk and plug it into whichever box I want to back up. Each box has a small rescue system, which I boot into to make the backup to ensure that all files are copied. Just a simple tar command, without compression for speed. Well, that isn't even close to nas... but thanks.
[gentoo-user] Re: homemade nas setup
Norman Rieß nor...@smash-net.org writes: The system only runs nfs, samba and a cups server. I do not use some fancy guis or anything like that. So settings have to be made in the config files manualy, except the cupsd which brings a web gui. Maybe that is something some people would miss. But i do not think a gentoo user would care. Have you timed any thing like write speeds across the network to this box? Is it connected into 10/100 or 1000 (gigabit) setup?
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: homemade nas setup
Harry Putnam schrieb: Norman Rieß nor...@smash-net.org writes: The system only runs nfs, samba and a cups server. I do not use some fancy guis or anything like that. So settings have to be made in the config files manualy, except the cupsd which brings a web gui. Maybe that is something some people would miss. But i do not think a gentoo user would care. Have you timed any thing like write speeds across the network to this box? Is it connected into 10/100 or 1000 (gigabit) setup? It is a gigabit setup. NFS read is about 30-34MB/s, writing is considerably slower with 15MB/s. So writing is a bit slow. But as i do not need fast storage i did not investigate. And it must be mentioned, that the whole data is in AES. I use this share like a local harddisk. There is nothing like Oh, this is on remote storage, i will do random thing differently. I do everything i do on a local disk, and i did not find anything that would not work due to lack of performance. Admitted i do not do much performancecritical stuff.
[gentoo-user] Re: homemade nas setup
Norman Rieß nor...@smash-net.org writes: Is it connected into 10/100 or 1000 (gigabit) setup? It is a gigabit setup. NFS read is about 30-34MB/s, writing is considerably slower with 15MB/s. So writing is a bit slow. But as i do not need fast storage i did not investigate. And it must be mentioned, that the whole data is in AES. Being AES should have a pretty dramatic impact right? or is it not decrypted and just bounced from one place to another? I use this share like a local harddisk. There is nothing like Oh, this is on remote storage, i will do random thing differently. I do everything i do on a local disk, and i did not find anything that would not work due to lack of performance. Admitted i do not do much performancecritical stuff. Thanks for very good input. What you report beats the snot out of the WD `My Book World Edition' I'm testing out. I only tried a few tests and they weren't done rigorously like someone benchmarking would have to do. I made no attempt to control what else might be running, other than not purposely starting anything. I tried copying 950MB of graphic files across gigabit lan (winXP to the Book) ... it took 3 min 40 seconds. (about 4mb sec) Whereas copying the same data from one machine to another (windowsXP) took 40 seconds. (Incidently.. that appears to be a bit faster than what you report at 23mb sec) Might have something to do with the fact that it is identical filesystem to identical filesystem (ntfs) Copying the same data from a winXP to my gentoo box across 10/100 lan took 1 min 10 seconds. (A little less than what you see at 13mb sec) So even in a case where the measurement should have been skewed in favor of the Book, it was over 300% slower. And in the case that should have been comparable it was over 500% slower. Unless I've made some horrible error in the math, which is not unlikely, I think my test shows 4mb per second. (I just divided the MB by the seconds), that is so far under what you see, that alone tells me to return this dog and spend the money ($229) building up my own.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: homemade nas setup
On 30 Jan 2009, at 18:33, Harry Putnam wrote: Norman Rieß nor...@smash-net.org writes: The system only runs nfs, samba and a cups server. I do not use some fancy guis or anything like that. So settings have to be made in the config files manualy, except the cupsd which brings a web gui. Maybe that is something some people would miss. But i do not think a gentoo user would care. Have you timed any thing like write speeds across the network to this box? Is it connected into 10/100 or 1000 (gigabit) setup? I meant to say in my last message that IIRC you're never going to actually achieve gigabit speeds. If your motherboard lacks an onboard gigabit card then you're limited by the PCI bus, and I don't know that most drives can even write as fast as gigabit. AFAICT one tends to use gigabit at present because it's faster than 100 Mbit/s - one would probably be happy with 400 Mbit/s or so, but if you've never used NAS or network storage before then in general old 100 Mbit/s ethernet is plenty fast enough for most people. Copying 700mb across old 100 Mbit/s ethernet only takes 2 minutes (I should add this is from a slow old PIII 700mhz NAS to my dual-proc G5 Mac with 3gig RAM SATA; copying the same file to the same disk on the G5 was less than 50% faster). Stroller.
[gentoo-user] Re: homemade nas setup
Matt Harrison iwasinnamuk...@genestate.com writes: I know its a little OT, but I have to mention ZFS. It'll mean running Solaris or FreeBSD in order to get the best out of it, but it's worth it. I changed my fileserver from a gentoo box with software raid and lvm over to ZFS on OpenSolaris and I haven't looked back. Gentoo is still my main OS but I think you just can't beat ZFS for a filer. Matt, I'm interested in quizzing you further on this so will ask the main question here. But, if you don't mind I'd like to talk to you off list at more length. Maybe a few pointer getting Opensolaris setup with the ZFS or the like. Are you backing up any windows boxes onto the ZFS? Is it just a matter of making it available by way of samba/cifs? Your list email address looks like it might be a phony (I didn't try it) but mine isn't so if you don't mind the personal contact please let me know and I'll write direct.
