best freebsd version for zfs file server

[Jason Keltz]

On 03/20/2013 09:07 AM, Ronald Klop wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Mar 2013 21:32:02 +0100, Jason Keltz <jas at cse.yorku.ca> wrote:
>
>> 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. :)
>
> I would run 9-RELEASE until there is a really (really really) good 
> reason to do otherwise.
> There is no reason to get h*rny about every feature or every 
> additional commit if just serving files works really well.
>
> Ronald.

Hi Ronald,

I'm not at all concerned about new functionality, or even minor bug 
fixes to general O/S commands that I likely won't be using on the server 
anyway.  That obviously leaves "current" out of the question, especially 
for a production server.  That being said, stability changes with 
respect to ZFS (of which there are already several in 9.1-stable as 
Freddie pointed out) are what I'm after.  I wish there was a better 
separation in FreeBSD between the "critical" versus "not so critical" 
patches ... something like "release" that I can always download and know 
that I can't really "go wrong"...  the difference between adding 
functionality, and fixing critical bugs in existing functionality.  I 
might be misunderstanding the whole concept, but it's probably what 
puzzles me more than anything about FreeBSD.  I'm coming from the RHEL 
world where I can rely on vendor binary kernels to fix serious bugs 
without "adding" new functionality.  Sometimes, things break, but in 
general, it's all pretty good...

Jason.



  The truth is, on my other machines, I'm using to running RHEL where 
there are frequent binary ker