On Wed, Jul 09, 2008 at 06:02:24PM -0700, Brandon High wrote: > On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 3:37 PM, Florin Iucha <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The reason for using a whole disk is that ZFS will turn on the drive's > cache. When using slices, the cache is normally disabled. If all > slices are using ZFS, you can turn the drive cache back on. I don't > think it happens by default right now, but you can set it manually.
Aha! Good to know. > Another alternative is to use an IDE to Compact Flash adapter, and > boot off of flash. I'll be building a media server once we move, and > that system will boot from flash. You can also boot from USB keys, but > USB under OpenSolaris seems to be iffy. > > Here's the component list that I'm planning to use right now: > http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?Source=MSWD&WishListNumber=7739092 That adapter won't work for me, since I have a single IDE port, and I need to use the DVD to install the OS and maybe to run some backups. However, this looks interesting: http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_reader/ad2sahdcf.asp as it has hardware mirroring. Not sure what the error reporting through the OS is though..., but I hope I don't have to find out. For the Compact Flash I would spring for the industrial grade: http://www.hitechvendors.com/showproduct.aspx?ProductID=4885&SEName=transcend-4gb-100x-industrial-cf-card-udma4-mode > > My plan right now is to create a 20 GB and a 720 GB slice on each > > disk, then create two storage pools, one RAID-1 (20 GB) and one RAID-5 > > (1.440 TB). Create the root, var, usr and opt file systems in the > > first pool, and home, library and photos in the second. I hope I > > won't need swap, but I could create three 1 GB slices (one on each > > disk) for that. > > I built a Linux-based NAS a few years back using an almost identical > scheme and wound up regretting it. In the future I would install the > system on a completely separate disk or group of disks than the shared > pool. This is the current Linux-based NAS and I'm not happy with its performance, either. > > Note: the hardware is committed (i.e. I already have it), so I am not > > inclined to deviate from it 8^) > > You might want to look at a 4 or 8 port SATA adapter rather than wait > for the southbridge fixes. I like the southbridge since it sits on the PCI express bus. The PCI bus is limited to 133 MB/s, which divided by 3 (disks) means 35-40 MB/s (including overhead) writes. And good quality PCI-express add-on controllers with Solaris drivers are quite expensive. Cheers, florin -- Bruce Schneier expects the Spanish Inquisition. http://geekz.co.uk/schneierfacts/fact/163
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