ZFS and Storage Systems

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 02:13:29PM +0200, Patrick M. Hausen wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 02:04:54PM +0200, Greg Byshenk wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 10:33:49AM +0100, Michal wrote:
> > > http://www.icc-usa.com/storage-35-2u.asp.
> > > ...
> 
> > You say "using a FreeBSD box I can set up ZFS over the drives...", which
> > doesn't make sense, if I undestand the ICC system. The device appears to
> > be an NAS system, with an OS, not an external disk bay.
> 
> To me these look like "storage servers", i.e. standard server
> hardware with room for a lot of hot pluggable drives. This point
> in their description seems to confirm that:

It's interesting that the vendor (ICC) advertises this as a 12-disk box,
yet it's only an 8-disk chassis.  Additionally, the PSUs are 720W, not
800W, so I'm not sure why they claim that either.

The chassis in question is almost certainly a Supermicro SC825TQ-R720UB,
by the way:

http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/2U/825/SC825TQ-R720U.cfm

The picture doesn't show the front bezel serial/USB ports mounted, but
they're visible on the SuperServer 6026T-URF (which is probably what ICC
is selling anyway, pre-populated with CPUs, RAM, etc.):

http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/2U/6026/SYS-6026T-URF.cfm

> That's a Linux based commercial NAS system that you install or
> plug into standard servers to turn them into a NAS.
> 
> See http://www.open-e.com/
> 
> So, IMHO, yes, you should be able to replace that DSS stuff with
> either stock FreeBSD or preferrably FreeNAS to turn one of these
> boxes into a ZFS based NAS. I'll check with the supplier before
> ordering, nonetheless.

It would be even better to simply ask them what exact Supermicro
hardware (specifically, model numbers) they're using to build these
systems.  You can see Supermicro mentioned in the <title> of their site,
so that's definitely what they're using, even down to the controller
card offerings (some of which (Marvell) are known to behave oddly on
FreeBSD (yes there are success stories, but there are also follow-up
horror stories) -- consider yourself warned).

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                   jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |