Quick ZFS mirroring question for non-mirrored pool

Kaya Saman SamanKaya at netscape.net
Sun May 16 12:44:25 UTC 2010


Thanks for the response Jeremy! Sorry didn't answer right away but as I 
said in my previous post it was 5am and I ended up crashing out.....

[...]
> I would highly recommend doing exactly what you've described here.  In
> fact, it's what I do on two of my home systems (Intel X25-V 40GB drive
> used for root, /usr, /var, and /tmp, and ZFS for everything else
> including /home), and what I plan on our servers one Intel 80GB SSDs
> drop to a more reasonable price.
>    

Cool :-) It's set then this is how I'm gona go.

> There are many people here who have gone through the pain (IMHO) of
> getting ZFS to boot on FreeBSD, and it still isn't as simple nor
> reliable (in all configurations) as it is on OpenSolaris/Solaris 10.
> There seem to be a large number of "gotchas" which come up when the
> administrator least expects/wants it (usually during a failure
> scenario).
>    

Thanks for the warning, I figured that as ZFS doesn't seem as well 
developed on BSD then Sun Microsystems version (now Sun Oracle just to 
be up to date!)

> Also, please reconsider going with Western Digital RE4 2TB drives.
> These drives are all "GP" (Green Power) drives, which you do not want.
> There have been numerous reports on the FreeBSD mailing lists about
> problems with these drives (repeated head offloading/parking causing
> problems in RAID arrays), and yes, it applies to Enterprise class drive
> as well; WD has indirectly confirmed the problem in one user's case by
> sending him a "fixed" firmware.  I can point you to threads if you want
> to read them.
>
> I would recommend you choose WD Caviar Black drives instead (cheaper,
> benefit from TLER when enabled, and throughput is much higher than GP
> drives), or another vendor of your choice.  Don't ask "Who do you
> recommend?" because everyone has different experiences/preferences;
> there's no vendor who's 99% reliable right now.  :-)
>
>    

I checked the Caviar Black out and yes it's cheaper which means better 
for me if it causes less problems and increases reliability; sorry to 
keep going on about the reliability issue but I just want the drives to 
ask a long time as I've had so many drive failures over the past few 
years it gets irritating not to mention expensive replacing drives every 
few months or years.

I found another alternative too which is a Seagate Barracuda 2TB 5900RPM 
Low Power drive...?? Don't know what you'd make of it though as you 
explicitly claimed not to use low-power drives?

Quote: "

  Don't ask "Who do you
recommend?" because everyone has different experiences/preferences;
there's no vendor who's 99% reliable right now.  :-)

"

Isn't this like asking people what their favorite color is?? There are 
something like 2^23 potentials lol if talking about a 24bit color matrix!

Many thanks for all the advice :-D It really is such a pleasure on 
mailing lists and forums to be helped by such nice and kind people (this 
includes everyone that has participated in my post!!)



P.s. this is deviating a bit from the subject but just caught the

  UNIX Systems Administrator

part in your signature!

It's so much where I wana be you have no idea so I'm really envious 
right now :-)

The incredibly funny part however is after searching far and wide I 
ended up working for a firm developing MS software for companies as a 
Systems Engineer.... the only catch is that they're having to teach me 
how to use Windows as I've never actually used it before since XP days 
about 8 years ago now and since they're using MS Server 2003/8 and Win 7 
I am completely lost as I don't really point click too much for stuff 
any more.

Even though my whole home setup is UNIX/Linux based down the switches, 
wireless AP's and routers which are all Cisco, 3Com or Foundary. 
.....that reminds me I gota get rid of the 72" Sun rack sitting in my 
parents living room LOL!



Many thanks,

Kaya


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