RHEL to FreeBSD file server

[Jason Keltz]

Thanks for your reply Bob!  I've thought about adding more memory to the 
R720 which can go up to 768 GB.  I'm just not quite sure how much we 
need, but it can never hurt to add more, I guess.  I know you can never 
have too much memory!! :)

Any specific suggested devices for the ZIL?

Jason.

On 11/12/2012 09:31 PM, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> I am not able to attest to the type of configuration you are building. 
> It all sounds good to me and it would surely work fine with Solaris, 
> and so likely with FreeBSD as well.  The only concern might be that 64 
> GB of memory is not so much according to today's hardware standards. 
> New hardware is easily able to fit 128 GB, 256 GB, or even 512 GB.
>
> If the working set from all those clients is bigger than will fit in 
> 64 GB of RAM, then your disks will be working much harder than they 
> should be.  With zfs, disks don't do any reading (reads will stall) 
> while zfs is writing a transaction group.  A proper server should be 
> doing mostly writing because key data is already in cache.
>
> With so many clients, make sure that your intent log FLASH devices are 
> mirrored and be prepared to replace them periodically.
>
> Bob


-- 
Jason Keltz
Manager of Development
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
York University, Toronto, Canada
Tel: 416-736-2100 x. 33570
Fax: 416-736-5872