Would ZFS and gmirror work well together in a two-node failover cluster?

[Jonathan Hogg]

On 18 Jul 2008, at 17:06, Maurice Volaski wrote:

> I am looking to put together a two-node high-availability cluster  
> where each node has identical data storage consisting of a set of  
> internal data drives (separate from the boot drive). I want ZFS to  
> manage the drives as a JDBOD in a RAIDZ2 configuration. Thus, if an  
> individual drive misbehaves or fails, ZFS detects and handles the  
> fault.
>
> But I'm also looking to mirror this entire setup in real time to a  
> second identical server.
>
> Basically, my question is can this work well on FreeBSD while taking  
> full advantage of ZFS?

Have you considered ZFS snapshots and send/receive? This would allow  
you to maintain a consistent (from ZFS' perspective) replica in near  
real-time (depending on how frequently the snapshots are taken).

If you can afford to lose a small window of data then this would seem  
the ideal solution and possibly more efficient as the synchronisation  
of the backup system would occur out-of-line with writing to the main  
system. This would allow bursts of full-speed writing to the main  
array followed by a more leisurely synchronisation to the backup.

(Apologies if you have already considered and dismissed this option.)

Jonathan