hardware for home use large storage

[Peter C. Lai]

On 2010-02-15 02:25:57PM -0800, Artem Belevich wrote:
> > How much ram are you running with?
> 
> 8GB on amd64. kmem_size=16G, zfs.arc_max=6G
> 
> > In a latest test with 8.0-R on i386 with 2GB of ram, an install to a ZFS
> > root *will* panic the kernel with kmem_size too small with default
> > settings. Even dropping down to Cy Schubert's uber-small config will panic
> > the kernel (vm.kmem_size_max = 330M, vfs.zfs.arc_size = 40M,
> > vfs.zfs.vdev.cache_size = 5M); the system is currently stable using DIST
> > kernel, vm.kmem_size/max = 512M, arc_size = 40M and vdev.cache_size = 5M.
> 
> On i386 you don't really have much wiggle room. Your address space is
> 32-bit and, to make things more interesting, it's split between
> user-land and kernel. You can keep bumping KVA_PAGES only so far and
> that's what limits your vm.kmem_size_max which is the upper limit for
> vm.kmem_size.
> 
> The bottom line -- if you're planning to use ZFS, do switch to amd64.
> Even with only 2GB of physical RAM available, your box will behave
> better. At the very least it will be possible to avoid the panics
> caused by kmem exhaustion.
> 
> --Artem

Well this ZFS box (which admittedly is mostly a testbed) is only a lowly 
NetBurst Gallatin Xeon, pre-amd64 :(

-- 
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Peter C. Lai                 | Bard College at Simon's Rock
Systems Administrator        | 84 Alford Rd.
Information Technology Svcs. | Gt. Barrington, MA 01230 USA
peter AT simons-rock.edu     | (413) 528-7428
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