best freebsd version for zfs file server

[Jason Keltz]

Hi.
I hope to soon put into production a new file server hosting many ZFS 
filesystem with FreeBSD.  The system has 2 x 9205-8e cards, and 1 x 
9207-8i card and 24 x 900 GB 10K RPM drives.   I'm trying to figure out 
what is ultimately the "best" version of FreeBSD to run on a production 
file server.  I believe that it doesn't make sense to stick directly to 
the 9.1/release because there have already been many ZFS problems that 
were solved in 9.1/stable.  On the other hand, stable doesn't 
necessarily have to be "stable"! Of course "release" might not be 
"stable" either if there's a bug that say, causes a hang on my 
controller card, and it's not fixed in anything but "stable"!   Yet, 
"stable" might "break" something else.  I'm wondering what people who 
are running FreeBSD file servers in production do --   do you track 
individual changes, and compile release + individual bug fixes that 
likely affect you, or, in my case, if I run "stable", do all my testing 
with "stable", do I run that version of stable, and only attempt to 
upgrade to the next "stable" release while very carefully reviewing the 
bug list, then holding my breath when the server comes up?  Any 
recommendations would be appreciated.  I know there are a lot of people 
who are happily running FreeBSD file servers. :)

Jason.

  On 03/19/2013 03:04 PM, Dmitry Morozovsky wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Mar 2013, Tom Evans wrote:
>
>>> I'm currently in process of making new backup server, based on LSI 9260
>>> controller.  I'm planning to use ZFS over disks, hence the most natural way
>>> seems to configure mfi to JBOD mode - but I can't find easy way to reach this,
>>> neither in BIOS utilities nor via MegaCli
>> 9260 should be SAS-2008 based, so mps(4) not mfi(4).
> Well, it at least detected by stable/9 GENERIC as mfi
>
>> The internet[1] suggests that this card should be flashable to a
>> 9211-8i with IT mode firmware, which is just about the ultimate ZFS
>> card, instant-JBOD on inserting a disk, passthru for SMART, high
>> performance, etc.
> Will check, thanks for the reference.
>
>> [1] http://blog.grem.de/sysadmin/LSI-SAS2008-Flashing-2012-04-12-22-17.html
>>