I've been using OpenSolaris for my home file server for a little over a year now. For most of that time I have used smb to share files out to my other systems. I also have a Windows Server 2003 DC and all my client systems are joined to the domain. Most of that time was a permissions nightmare getting smb to jive with the domain. The last issue I ran into was the final straw. I backed up all my data and executed a zpool destroy. And it felt kinda good...
I then turned to iSCSI to access my files. I've put the OpenSolaris box on a crossover cable hooked directly to my Windows server with a couple of gig cards. I've setup iSCSI, after resolving some issues with poor performance due to sync writes and ZIL issues, I'm pretty happy with the setup. I've got a 2.4T volume in my Raidz pool my Windows box uses for one big NTFS volume. Windows deals with sharing the data to all the Windows clients and everyone is happy. No ACL issues, no user maps, it just works. I'm sure a ton of nix hardcores either stopped reading already or are puking in their hat. Sorry to disturb, I don't like NTFS anymore than you. But I picked the best option I could find and it works better for me. If anyone is able to educate me on a better way or a way of making smb more reliable in a Windows Domain or any other alternative that allows me to use Windows Domain permissions I'm all ears. I have already run into one little snag that I don't see any way of overcoming with my chosen method. I've upgraded to snv_129 with high hopes for getting the most out of deduplication. But using iSCSI volumes I'm not sure how I can gain any benefit from it. The volumes are a set size, Windows sees those volumes as that size despite any sort of block level deduplication or compression taking place on the other side of the iSCSI connection. I can't create volumes that add up to more than the original pool size from what I can tell. I can see the pool is saving space but it doesn't appear to become available to zfs volumes. Dedup being pretty new I haven't found much on the subject online. So my question is... Using zfs solely for hosting iSCSI targets. Is there any way to use the space gained by deduplication? -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
