FreeBSD as Server

[Eric Anderson]

Patrik Forsberg wrote:
>> I am ISP admin. All my server work under Linux, but I want to try for 
>> this function FreeBSD. Once I used server under FreeBSD 5.3. Now I 
>> testing FreeBSD 6.0.
>> I liked functions such as dummy net, simple configuring, etc. But in 
>> FreeBSD I don't have alternative FileSystems exclude UFS and UFS2. On 
>> high-loaded FileServer is good idea to use XFS or ReiserFS, 
>> but this FS 
>> don't supported as well as in Linux. How I can to solve this problem?
>>     
>
> UFS2 scales very well on a havy loaded server so I see no reason to use
> RaiserFS or any other FS in FreeBSD ?
>   

One good reason, would be journaling, but that isn't necessarily compelling.

> I've ran, and is about to do so, a major newfeed machine, which use alot
> of disk i/o, on UFS2 without any trouble.
> With softupdate in UFS2 the fsck in case of a crash is very time
> limited.
>   

I don't believe softupdates changes the recovery time any significant 
amount, but it does ensure meta-data consistency.  With background fsck, 
your startup time can be reduced, which is very nice.

> As for XFS and ReiserFS support you do have the support in ports:
>
> Path:   /usr/ports/sysutils/progsreiserfs
> Info:   Utilities and library to manipulate ReiserFS partitions
>
> Path:   /usr/ports/sysutils/xfsprogs
> Info:   A set of utilities and library to manipulate an xfs filesystem

Note that those are read-only support.

I have many FreeBSD servers here, that are *VERY HEAVILY* used, and the 
entire company depends on them.  I have 100's of GB's to tens of TB's 
hosted on FreeBSD servers, and I'm very happy to say it performs 
incredibly well, and is very stable.  Both 5.4(STABLE) and 6-STABLE are 
very solid for serving.

One thing to be warned about - the larger the single filesystem, the 
more memory you will need for fsck's.  Actually, it's more dependant on 
number of files, but the relationship is there.  Full 2Tb filesystems 
(for me) require about 2.5GB of memory available for fsck use, YMMV.

Eric




-- 
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Eric Anderson        Sr. Systems Administrator        Centaur Technology
Anything that works is better than anything that doesn't.
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