Which OS

[Paul Kraus via illumos-zfs]

tl;dr I am at a crossroads where I can change OS from FreeBSD to SmartOS or OmniOS, should I

I know that this is more of an opinion than a fact question, but I have an opportunity to choose an OS. I am building a new server for home use. Here are the limitations / requirements / desires:

*- Must use ZFS. My data is currently living in a 5 disk RAIDz2 pool running under FreeBSD 9.1 and I want to be able to just physically move the disks over and import the pool.

*- My current server is an HP Micro Proliant N36L, the new one is an N54L. 8 GB RAM (I would put in more but I am not sure the BIOS will support more than 8 GB). The new server has a pair of 120 GB SSD (Kingston V300 that I got relatively cheap) that can be used however is most beneficial.

*- The PRIMARY function is as a file server via both NFS (to Mac OS clients) and SMB (to Windows and older Mac OS clients).

*- Secondary functions include: DHCP server, DNS server, maybe mail server (I am considering moving all the mail out to a Joyent SmartOS instance so I do not have to permit SSL IMAP into my home network), maybe LDAP (authentication) service, and occasional Web/PHP/MySQL development.

*- My current server (N36L) will become my offsite backup server getting incremental zfs send / recv streams via an SSH tunnel.

The OS options currently on the table include:

FreeBSD 10.0
SmartOS (current)
OmniOS (current stable)

I have confirmed that all three are either supported or “reported to work” on my hardware (I have booted each and run them for a bit on the exact hardware I will be using).

It seems to me (and I may be wrong here) that SmartOS is further ahead in terms of ZFS development than either OmniOS or FreeBSD. But SmartOS is more designed for hosting VM’s (zones) than being a basic server. If I went the SmartOS route, the NFS file service would be in the Global Zone and all the other services in Local Zones (Containers). The SmartOS documentation makes it clear that you should run as little as you can in the Global Zone. I am not opposed to that model, that is what we did under Solaris 10 at my last long term contract.

I have been running a handful of FreeBSD systems in both production and development for about 2 years and have not had any bad experiences (if you ignore the FreeBSD VBox guest that kept losing it’s boot block with every restart of the VM). The robustness of ZFS has bailed my butt out on a number of occasions (yes, some of my configurations are less than best practice due to cost constraints).

Prior to working with FreeBSD I had been managing Solaris systems since 1995 and between about 2009 and 2012 had been managing a 250 TB zpool of mission critical storage.* So I am familiar with the Solaris way of doing things (SMF, ZFS, etc.). I currently have a couple Joyent SmartOS instances for client’s production services.

So what is the general opinion here … Which of the three am I better off with ?

NOTE: I am also evaluating whether it makes sense to convert our development server at the office from FreeBSD with VirtualBox to SmartOS with Zones and KVM. We have been recommending Joyent SmartOS instances for our clients when they go production, so having it in-house is a smart move.

* The 250 TB of storage was mostly small files, over 400 million of them when I left about 2 years ago. ZFS was the only FS when we started the designing the project in 2005 that could handle that many objects in one filesystem and not take a huge performance penalty. We had to present the data to the clients as one coherent view and did try breaking it up by logical groupings behind the scenes, that was a disaster in terms of manageability and scalability. One huge zfs zpool with separate zfs datasets (to allow for manageable backups … snapshot + send/recv) was the only sane way to go.

--
Paul Kraus
***@kraus-haus.org

[Garrett D'Amore via illumos-zfs]

For your use, I wouldn't recommend SmartOS only because the management
model is going to be so very different from what you're used to. (SmartOS
is incredibly powerful, and I do recommend looking at it; but I wouldn't
recommend *switching* to it until you have first become familiar with it.)

Both OmniOS and FreeBSD are reasonable choices. I am partial to the
illumos code base, but for the platform you're on, probably the best bet is
to stick with what you know. Staying with FreeBSD is the safest IMO, but
its not a big risk either way, and either OS will serve you well IMO.
(Some things are a little ahead on OmniOS -- especially expect to see a
slightly more up to date ZFS and DTrace. Expect to see better
virtualization options on OmniOS as well. But FreeBSD has a slightly
bigger set of 3rd party software that is known to work, and the user land
tools are a bit more modern since FreeBSD tends to give higher priority to
modernization than retaining backwards compatibility.) There is a lot of
collaboration between the illumos and FreeBSD communities -- probably more
than most people realize since a lot of happens behind the scenes. :-)

From the perspective of keeping oneself current, there may be value in
using both -- whichever one you use at work, use the other at home. This
keeps your experience set a bit broader, and might make you more valuable
in the marketplace.


On Thu, Jun 26, 2014 at 12:33 PM, Paul Kraus via illumos-zfs <

Post by Paul Kraus via illumos-zfs
tl;dr I am at a crossroads where I can change OS from FreeBSD to SmartOS
or OmniOS, should I
I know that this is more of an opinion than a fact question, but I have an
opportunity to choose an OS. I am building a new server for home use. Here
*- Must use ZFS. My data is currently living in a 5 disk RAIDz2 pool
running under FreeBSD 9.1 and I want to be able to just physically move the
disks over and import the pool.
*- My current server is an HP Micro Proliant N36L, the new one is an N54L.
8 GB RAM (I would put in more but I am not sure the BIOS will support more
than 8 GB). The new server has a pair of 120 GB SSD (Kingston V300 that I
got relatively cheap) that can be used however is most beneficial.
*- The PRIMARY function is as a file server via both NFS (to Mac OS
clients) and SMB (to Windows and older Mac OS clients).
*- Secondary functions include: DHCP server, DNS server, maybe mail server
(I am considering moving all the mail out to a Joyent SmartOS instance so I
do not have to permit SSL IMAP into my home network), maybe LDAP
(authentication) service, and occasional Web/PHP/MySQL development.
*- My current server (N36L) will become my offsite backup server getting
incremental zfs send / recv streams via an SSH tunnel.
FreeBSD 10.0
SmartOS (current)
OmniOS (current stable)
I have confirmed that all three are either supported or “reported to work”
on my hardware (I have booted each and run them for a bit on the exact
hardware I will be using).
It seems to me (and I may be wrong here) that SmartOS is further ahead in
terms of ZFS development than either OmniOS or FreeBSD. But SmartOS is more
designed for hosting VM’s (zones) than being a basic server. If I went the
SmartOS route, the NFS file service would be in the Global Zone and all the
other services in Local Zones (Containers). The SmartOS documentation makes
it clear that you should run as little as you can in the Global Zone. I am
not opposed to that model, that is what we did under Solaris 10 at my last
long term contract.
I have been running a handful of FreeBSD systems in both production and
development for about 2 years and have not had any bad experiences (if you
ignore the FreeBSD VBox guest that kept losing it’s boot block with every
restart of the VM). The robustness of ZFS has bailed my butt out on a
number of occasions (yes, some of my configurations are less than best
practice due to cost constraints).
Prior to working with FreeBSD I had been managing Solaris systems since
1995 and between about 2009 and 2012 had been managing a 250 TB zpool of
mission critical storage.* So I am familiar with the Solaris way of doing
things (SMF, ZFS, etc.). I currently have a couple Joyent SmartOS instances
for client’s production services.
So what is the general opinion here 
 Which of the three am I better off
with ?
NOTE: I am also evaluating whether it makes sense to convert our
development server at the office from FreeBSD with VirtualBox to SmartOS
with Zones and KVM. We have been recommending Joyent SmartOS instances for
our clients when they go production, so having it in-house is a smart move.
* The 250 TB of storage was mostly small files, over 400 million of them
when I left about 2 years ago. ZFS was the only FS when we started the
designing the project in 2005 that could handle that many objects in one
filesystem and not take a huge performance penalty. We had to present the
data to the clients as one coherent view and did try breaking it up by
logical groupings behind the scenes, that was a disaster in terms of
manageability and scalability. One huge zfs zpool with separate zfs
datasets (to allow for manageable backups 
 snapshot + send/recv) was the
only sane way to go.
--
Paul Kraus
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[Richard Yao via illumos-zfs]

OmniOS would be your best option in my opinion.

Post by Paul Kraus via illumos-zfs
tl;dr I am at a crossroads where I can change OS from FreeBSD to SmartOS or OmniOS, should I
*- Must use ZFS. My data is currently living in a 5 disk RAIDz2 pool running under FreeBSD 9.1 and I want to be able to just physically move the disks over and import the pool.
*- My current server is an HP Micro Proliant N36L, the new one is an N54L. 8 GB RAM (I would put in more but I am not sure the BIOS will support more than 8 GB). The new server has a pair of 120 GB SSD (Kingston V300 that I got relatively cheap) that can be used however is most beneficial.
*- The PRIMARY function is as a file server via both NFS (to Mac OS clients) and SMB (to Windows and older Mac OS clients).
*- Secondary functions include: DHCP server, DNS server, maybe mail server (I am considering moving all the mail out to a Joyent SmartOS instance so I do not have to permit SSL IMAP into my home network), maybe LDAP (authentication) service, and occasional Web/PHP/MySQL development.
*- My current server (N36L) will become my offsite backup server getting incremental zfs send / recv streams via an SSH tunnel.
FreeBSD 10.0
SmartOS (current)
OmniOS (current stable)
I have confirmed that all three are either supported or “reported to work” on my hardware (I have booted each and run them for a bit on the exact hardware I will be using).
It seems to me (and I may be wrong here) that SmartOS is further ahead in terms of ZFS development than either OmniOS or FreeBSD. But SmartOS is more designed for hosting VM’s (zones) than being a basic server. If I went the SmartOS route, the NFS file service would be in the Global Zone and all the other services in Local Zones (Containers). The SmartOS documentation makes it clear that you should run as little as you can in the Global Zone. I am not opposed to that model, that is what we did under Solaris 10 at my last long term contract.
I have been running a handful of FreeBSD systems in both production and development for about 2 years and have not had any bad experiences (if you ignore the FreeBSD VBox guest that kept losing it’s boot block with every restart of the VM). The robustness of ZFS has bailed my butt out on a number of occasions (yes, some of my configurations are less than best practice due to cost constraints).
Prior to working with FreeBSD I had been managing Solaris systems since 1995 and between about 2009 and 2012 had been managing a 250 TB zpool of mission critical storage.* So I am familiar with the Solaris way of doing things (SMF, ZFS, etc.). I currently have a couple Joyent SmartOS instances for client’s production services.
So what is the general opinion here … Which of the three am I better off with ?
NOTE: I am also evaluating whether it makes sense to convert our development server at the office from FreeBSD with VirtualBox to SmartOS with Zones and KVM. We have been recommending Joyent SmartOS instances for our clients when they go production, so having it in-house is a smart move.
* The 250 TB of storage was mostly small files, over 400 million of them when I left about 2 years ago. ZFS was the only FS when we started the designing the project in 2005 that could handle that many objects in one filesystem and not take a huge performance penalty. We had to present the data to the clients as one coherent view and did try breaking it up by logical groupings behind the scenes, that was a disaster in terms of manageability and scalability. One huge zfs zpool with separate zfs datasets (to allow for manageable backups … snapshot + send/recv) was the only sane way to go.
--
Paul Kraus
-------------------------------------------
illumos-zfs
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[Youzhong Yang via illumos-zfs]

If you need to make changes to the OS, use SmartOS - it's so easy to build
a new image! While for OminiOS, its build system is awful, unfriendly,
painful.


On Thu, Jun 26, 2014 at 12:33 PM, Paul Kraus via illumos-zfs <

Post by Paul Kraus via illumos-zfs
tl;dr I am at a crossroads where I can change OS from FreeBSD to SmartOS
or OmniOS, should I
I know that this is more of an opinion than a fact question, but I have an
opportunity to choose an OS. I am building a new server for home use. Here
*- Must use ZFS. My data is currently living in a 5 disk RAIDz2 pool
running under FreeBSD 9.1 and I want to be able to just physically move the
disks over and import the pool.
*- My current server is an HP Micro Proliant N36L, the new one is an N54L.
8 GB RAM (I would put in more but I am not sure the BIOS will support more
than 8 GB). The new server has a pair of 120 GB SSD (Kingston V300 that I
got relatively cheap) that can be used however is most beneficial.
*- The PRIMARY function is as a file server via both NFS (to Mac OS
clients) and SMB (to Windows and older Mac OS clients).
*- Secondary functions include: DHCP server, DNS server, maybe mail server
(I am considering moving all the mail out to a Joyent SmartOS instance so I
do not have to permit SSL IMAP into my home network), maybe LDAP
(authentication) service, and occasional Web/PHP/MySQL development.
*- My current server (N36L) will become my offsite backup server getting
incremental zfs send / recv streams via an SSH tunnel.
FreeBSD 10.0
SmartOS (current)
OmniOS (current stable)
I have confirmed that all three are either supported or “reported to work”
on my hardware (I have booted each and run them for a bit on the exact
hardware I will be using).
It seems to me (and I may be wrong here) that SmartOS is further ahead in
terms of ZFS development than either OmniOS or FreeBSD. But SmartOS is more
designed for hosting VM’s (zones) than being a basic server. If I went the
SmartOS route, the NFS file service would be in the Global Zone and all the
other services in Local Zones (Containers). The SmartOS documentation makes
it clear that you should run as little as you can in the Global Zone. I am
not opposed to that model, that is what we did under Solaris 10 at my last
long term contract.
I have been running a handful of FreeBSD systems in both production and
development for about 2 years and have not had any bad experiences (if you
ignore the FreeBSD VBox guest that kept losing it’s boot block with every
restart of the VM). The robustness of ZFS has bailed my butt out on a
number of occasions (yes, some of my configurations are less than best
practice due to cost constraints).
Prior to working with FreeBSD I had been managing Solaris systems since
1995 and between about 2009 and 2012 had been managing a 250 TB zpool of
mission critical storage.* So I am familiar with the Solaris way of doing
things (SMF, ZFS, etc.). I currently have a couple Joyent SmartOS instances
for client’s production services.
So what is the general opinion here 
 Which of the three am I better off
with ?
NOTE: I am also evaluating whether it makes sense to convert our
development server at the office from FreeBSD with VirtualBox to SmartOS
with Zones and KVM. We have been recommending Joyent SmartOS instances for
our clients when they go production, so having it in-house is a smart move.
* The 250 TB of storage was mostly small files, over 400 million of them
when I left about 2 years ago. ZFS was the only FS when we started the
designing the project in 2005 that could handle that many objects in one
filesystem and not take a huge performance penalty. We had to present the
data to the clients as one coherent view and did try breaking it up by
logical groupings behind the scenes, that was a disaster in terms of
manageability and scalability. One huge zfs zpool with separate zfs
datasets (to allow for manageable backups 
 snapshot + send/recv) was the
only sane way to go.
--
Paul Kraus
-------------------------------------------
illumos-zfs
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[Paul B. Henson via illumos-zfs]

From: Youzhong Yang
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2014 11:42 AM
If you need to make changes to the OS, use SmartOS - it's so easy to build a
new image! While for OminiOS, its build system is awful, unfriendly, painful.

I'm not sure how frequently the average user would run into the requirement to patch and rebuild the OS, particularly this for basic file service and general application use. I've done some work on illumos-omnios, it was kind of a pain, some from unfamiliarity and some from awkwardness, but it was doable. There are also people at OmniTI that I know are working on making it better, so if you have any specific complaints or suggestions you might try the omnios-discuss list...

[Keith Wesolowski via illumos-zfs]

Post by Paul Kraus via illumos-zfs
It seems to me (and I may be wrong here) that SmartOS is further ahead
in terms of ZFS development than either OmniOS or FreeBSD. But SmartOS

Ahead of FreeBSD, yes. Ahead of Omni, not really. We have a throttling
feature that isn't in illumos yet, I believe, but for the most part
we're in sync with illumos. I would characterise our state of ZFS as
being broadly on par with other frequently-synced distributions.

Post by Paul Kraus via illumos-zfs
is more designed for hosting VM’s (zones) than being a basic server.

Correct.

[Paul B. Henson via illumos-zfs]

From: Paul Kraus
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2014 9:34 AM
*- The PRIMARY function is as a file server via both NFS (to Mac OS

clients)

and SMB (to Windows and older Mac OS clients).
*- Secondary functions include: DHCP server, DNS server, maybe mail server
(I am considering moving all the mail out to a Joyent SmartOS instance so

I

do not have to permit SSL IMAP into my home network), maybe LDAP
(authentication) service, and occasional Web/PHP/MySQL development.

I haven't used freebsd in well over a decade, so can't really comment on
that route. However, given your intended use, I would probably recommend
omnios over smartos. NFS can only run in the global zone, and it's a
PITA/not recommended to do much configuration of the global zone in smartos,
so you'd really be fitting a square peg in a round hole for that use.
There's talk of getting NFS to run in other zones, but I'm not sure if/when
that would ever materialize.

I'm using omnios for a similar purpose, NFS/CIFS file service, and
miscellaneous other stuff, and so far it's been working great.

[Gary Driggs via illumos-zfs]

There's talk of getting NFS to run in other zones, but I'm not sure if/when that would ever materialize.

what about netatalk?

[Robert Mustacchi via illumos-zfs]

Post by Gary Driggs via illumos-zfs

There's talk of getting NFS to run in other zones, but I'm not sure if/when that would ever materialize.

what about netatalk?

There's no in-kernel netatalk server. So you just need appropriate
userland software which works just fine in zones today.

Robert

[Chris Ridd via illumos-zfs]

Post by Gary Driggs via illumos-zfs

There's talk of getting NFS to run in other zones, but I'm not sure if/when that would ever materialize.

what about netatalk?

It may be worth noting that Apple's moving away from AFP (netatalk) towards SMB2. Some things like Time Machine still require AFP though.

Chris

[Paul Kraus via illumos-zfs]

Post by Chris Ridd via illumos-zfs
It may be worth noting that Apple's moving away from AFP (netatalk) towards SMB2. Some things like Time Machine still require AFP though.

My household has Unix-like server, many Mac OS clients, and one Windows client.

Back in the days of Mac OS X 10.4 [Tiger] (which I still run on a couple old PPC based machines), Apple’s NFS client was truly horrible. Performance well under 1.0 MB/sec. On these machines I use SMB where I get between 30 and 50 MB/sec.

I do not recall whether it was 10.6 [Snow Leopard] or 10.7 [Lion] that saw a massive improvement in the NFS client. My Intel based Macs are all running 10.9 [Mavericks] now and the NFS performance is on par with the SMB performance -and- the namespace matches the base OS (at both ends). When using SMB I did occasionally run into file name issues, especially with iTunes libraries.

I have never needed to use AppleTalk, but I also never tried running Time Machine over the network (not because it is bad idea, just because I never needed to, my Macs tend to be treated as FRUs and all the data lives on the server).

--
Paul Kraus
***@kraus-haus.org

[Paul B. Henson via illumos-zfs]

Post by Chris Ridd via illumos-zfs
It may be worth noting that Apple's moving away from AFP (netatalk)
towards SMB2. Some things like Time Machine still require AFP though.

There's actually a work around for that; you can create a sparse disk
image on a CIFS share and tell time machine to use it.

[Gordon Ross via illumos-zfs]

Why bother with netatalk? Apple is moving to SMB (SMB2).
MacOS has good support SMB and SMB2.


On Thu, Jun 26, 2014 at 10:53 PM, Gary Driggs via illumos-zfs

Post by Gary Driggs via illumos-zfs

There's talk of getting NFS to run in other zones, but I'm not sure if/when that would ever materialize.

what about netatalk?
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[Dan McDonald via illumos-zfs]

Post by Gordon Ross via illumos-zfs
Why bother with netatalk? Apple is moving to SMB (SMB2).
MacOS has good support SMB and SMB2.

Unless you are using MacOS prior to 10.6, you should use NFS or SMB. I use NFS with my household Macs.

Dan

[Paul Kraus via illumos-zfs]

Post by Dan McDonald via illumos-zfs
Unless you are using MacOS prior to 10.6, you should use NFS or SMB. I use NFS with my household Macs.

I have had very good results with the Samba port that is part of Mac OS 10.4

--
Paul Kraus
***@kraus-haus.org

[Tim Cook via illumos-zfs]

On Mon, Jun 30, 2014 at 12:54 PM, Gordon Ross via illumos-zfs <

Post by Gordon Ross via illumos-zfs
Why bother with netatalk? Apple is moving to SMB (SMB2).
MacOS has good support SMB and SMB2.

Time Machine still requires Appletalk.

--Tim



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[Sam Zaydel via illumos-zfs]

It is strange that they "Apple" are not addressing time machine at all. It
is an annoyance and for any TM user Appletalk is still a prerequisite to be
sure. You'd think that move to SMB would mean that TM is made to natively
support it, but apparently they have things a bit of order in terms of
priorities.


On Mon, Jun 30, 2014 at 11:11 AM, Tim Cook via illumos-zfs <

Post by Tim Cook via illumos-zfs
On Mon, Jun 30, 2014 at 12:54 PM, Gordon Ross via illumos-zfs <

Post by Gordon Ross via illumos-zfs
Why bother with netatalk? Apple is moving to SMB (SMB2).
MacOS has good support SMB and SMB2.

Time Machine still requires Appletalk.
--Tim
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[Tim Cook via illumos-zfs]

On Mon, Jun 30, 2014 at 1:23 PM, Sam Zaydel via illumos-zfs <

Post by Sam Zaydel via illumos-zfs
It is strange that they "Apple" are not addressing time machine at all. It
is an annoyance and for any TM user Appletalk is still a prerequisite to be
sure. You'd think that move to SMB would mean that TM is made to natively
support it, but apparently they have things a bit of order in terms of
priorities.

It's an easy way to keep people buying Time Capsules. Everyone can do SMB
and NFS well. Most netatalk implementations are still buggy.

Post by Sam Zaydel via illumos-zfs
On Mon, Jun 30, 2014 at 11:11 AM, Tim Cook via illumos-zfs <

Post by Tim Cook via illumos-zfs
On Mon, Jun 30, 2014 at 12:54 PM, Gordon Ross via illumos-zfs <

Post by Gordon Ross via illumos-zfs
Why bother with netatalk? Apple is moving to SMB (SMB2).
MacOS has good support SMB and SMB2.

Time Machine still requires Appletalk.
--Tim
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[Gregg Wonderly via illumos-zfs]

Realistically, the time capsule works well for me. The distain for time capsules amazes me. It’s one less thing I have to worry about. I can take it to the Apple Store and say “fix it”. It keeps me from having to “run a server” somewhere to get backups, and because it’s a wireless router, it takes care of two problems in a single box. Yes, you can’t hack on it. But really, why would you want to? Do you insist on having firmware for your disk drives? At some level of the stack for all of these technologies, you have to be willing to say, below here, I don’t care.

For most people, there just needs to be a “level” where dependability exists in concert with that level so that you can not worry about it, or have responsibility to “fix it”. That’s why I like the time capsule. the 5 that I’ve bought have been bullet proof for the time periods that I have used them. The oldest I bought in 2007, and it’s sitting on the desk in my office providing my “off site” backups for my mac book air. It’s a simple 500MB device, and that’s good enough for my 500MB macbook air.

Gregg

It is strange that they "Apple" are not addressing time machine at all. It is an annoyance and for any TM user Appletalk is still a prerequisite to be sure. You'd think that move to SMB would mean that TM is made to natively support it, but apparently they have things a bit of order in terms of priorities.
It's an easy way to keep people buying Time Capsules. Everyone can do SMB and NFS well. Most netatalk implementations are still buggy.
Why bother with netatalk? Apple is moving to SMB (SMB2).
MacOS has good support SMB and SMB2.
Time Machine still requires Appletalk.
--Tim
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[Sam Zaydel via illumos-zfs]

I am sure you are right Tim. But seems rather two-faced on their part. I
suppose they can do whatever they want.

Post by Tim Cook via illumos-zfs
On Mon, Jun 30, 2014 at 1:23 PM, Sam Zaydel via illumos-zfs <

Post by Sam Zaydel via illumos-zfs
It is strange that they "Apple" are not addressing time machine at all.
It is an annoyance and for any TM user Appletalk is still a prerequisite to
be sure. You'd think that move to SMB would mean that TM is made to
natively support it, but apparently they have things a bit of order in
terms of priorities.

It's an easy way to keep people buying Time Capsules. Everyone can do SMB
and NFS well. Most netatalk implementations are still buggy.

Post by Sam Zaydel via illumos-zfs
On Mon, Jun 30, 2014 at 11:11 AM, Tim Cook via illumos-zfs <

Post by Tim Cook via illumos-zfs
On Mon, Jun 30, 2014 at 12:54 PM, Gordon Ross via illumos-zfs <

Post by Gordon Ross via illumos-zfs
Why bother with netatalk? Apple is moving to SMB (SMB2).
MacOS has good support SMB and SMB2.

Time Machine still requires Appletalk.
--Tim
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[Ian Collins via illumos-zfs]

Post by Paul Kraus via illumos-zfs

From: Paul Kraus
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2014 9:34 AM
*- The PRIMARY function is as a file server via both NFS (to Mac OS

clients)

and SMB (to Windows and older Mac OS clients).
*- Secondary functions include: DHCP server, DNS server, maybe mail server
(I am considering moving all the mail out to a Joyent SmartOS instance so

I

do not have to permit SSL IMAP into my home network), maybe LDAP
(authentication) service, and occasional Web/PHP/MySQL development.

I haven't used freebsd in well over a decade, so can't really comment on
that route. However, given your intended use, I would probably recommend
omnios over smartos. NFS can only run in the global zone, and it's a
PITA/not recommended to do much configuration of the global zone in smartos,
so you'd really be fitting a square peg in a round hole for that use.

Which can be a nasty gotcha for for those of us who are migrating away
from Solaris!

Post by Paul Kraus via illumos-zfs
There's talk of getting NFS to run in other zones, but I'm not sure if/when
that would ever materialize.

SmartOS does fit nicely if you want to provide storage for legacy VmWare
systems as well as hosting newer VMs under KVM. It's also a fair choice
for hosting CIFS/Samba zones for those pesky windows users! If you are
going to make extensive use of zones, I think SmartOS has the best
deployment model.

[Sam Zaydel via illumos-zfs]

All this talk about OS versions and SmartOS prompted me to suggest looking
at http://www.dogeos.net, which is actually a very well done Project FIFO
wrapping around SmartOS. Yes, smartOS does have a rather different approach
to how systems are to be managed, a more modern approach, which I must say
is now being widely adapted (stolen) by amongst others, coreOS. But, I
digress. I think for a non-cloud-type, small scale deployment, dogeos
actually gives a very nice management layer which makes it much, much
easier to use SmartOS and all its outstanding features without building
your own API to adapt to realities of the system not being part of a herd
in a dataceter.

Just my 5c.




On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 1:14 AM, Ian Collins via illumos-zfs <

Post by Ian Collins via illumos-zfs

From: Paul Kraus

Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2014 9:34 AM
*- The PRIMARY function is as a file server via both NFS (to Mac OS

clients)

and SMB (to Windows and older Mac OS clients).
*- Secondary functions include: DHCP server, DNS server, maybe mail server
(I am considering moving all the mail out to a Joyent SmartOS instance so

I

do not have to permit SSL IMAP into my home network), maybe LDAP
(authentication) service, and occasional Web/PHP/MySQL development.

I haven't used freebsd in well over a decade, so can't really comment on
that route. However, given your intended use, I would probably recommend
omnios over smartos. NFS can only run in the global zone, and it's a
PITA/not recommended to do much configuration of the global zone in smartos,
so you'd really be fitting a square peg in a round hole for that use.

Which can be a nasty gotcha for for those of us who are migrating away
from Solaris!
There's talk of getting NFS to run in other zones, but I'm not sure

if/when
that would ever materialize.

SmartOS does fit nicely if you want to provide storage for legacy VmWare
systems as well as hosting newer VMs under KVM. It's also a fair choice
for hosting CIFS/Samba zones for those pesky windows users! If you are
going to make extensive use of zones, I think SmartOS has the best
deployment model.
--
Ian.
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[Gordon Ross via illumos-zfs]

Shameless plug: NexentaStor Community Edition
http://nexenta.com/products/downloads
works very well for NFS+CIFS workloads.

On Thu, Jun 26, 2014 at 10:34 PM, Paul B. Henson via illumos-zfs

Post by Paul Kraus via illumos-zfs

From: Paul Kraus
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2014 9:34 AM
*- The PRIMARY function is as a file server via both NFS (to Mac OS

clients)

and SMB (to Windows and older Mac OS clients).
*- Secondary functions include: DHCP server, DNS server, maybe mail server
(I am considering moving all the mail out to a Joyent SmartOS instance so

I

do not have to permit SSL IMAP into my home network), maybe LDAP
(authentication) service, and occasional Web/PHP/MySQL development.

I haven't used freebsd in well over a decade, so can't really comment on
that route. However, given your intended use, I would probably recommend
omnios over smartos. NFS can only run in the global zone, and it's a
PITA/not recommended to do much configuration of the global zone in smartos,
so you'd really be fitting a square peg in a round hole for that use.
There's talk of getting NFS to run in other zones, but I'm not sure if/when
that would ever materialize.
I'm using omnios for a similar purpose, NFS/CIFS file service, and
miscellaneous other stuff, and so far it's been working great.
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[Paul Kraus via illumos-zfs]

Post by Gordon Ross via illumos-zfs
Shameless plug: NexentaStor Community Edition
http://nexenta.com/products/downloads
works very well for NFS+CIFS workloads.

I looked at NexentaStor (both Community and Enterprise editions). What stopped me was the *other* services I need to run.

I also looked at FreeNAS and dropped it from considerations for two reasons; it is still FreeBSD 9 based and I did not want to have to learn *another* management paradigm (their “Plug Ins”) to get my other services.

I do not believe in taking an appliance and trying to make a general purpose OS out of it :-)

P.S. Gordon, contact me off-list about a potential Nexenta opportunity.

--
Paul Kraus
***@kraus-haus.org

[Jim Klimov via illumos-zfs]

Post by Paul Kraus via illumos-zfs
*- My current server is an HP Micro Proliant N36L, the new one is an N54L. 8 GB RAM (I would put in more but I am not sure the BIOS will support more than 8 GB). The new server has a pair of 120 GB SSD (Kingston V300 that I got relatively cheap) that can be used however is most beneficial.

Yes, my brother's N54L has 2*8GB ECC. I can look up the shopping list if you're interested in other details (ssd, etc.)

So, I'm back to net a bit more ;)

Is he running factory BIOS ? I am uneasy running non-factory BIOS.

Yes, we considered re-flashing into one of the many alternate BIOSes,
but ultimately had no need to, since the MoBo SATA ports are not used
in this setup with an add-on LSI controller. So it is the same version
of the factory BIOS that the chassis came with, not touched much beside
just looking at its settings (maybe fixing a few toggles regarding the
virtualization support, etc.).

Do note that the box physical size is limited, so seek out half-length
half-height controllers (HBA, NIC, ...) and hope they fit ;)

I believe it was problematic for my brother to order some Dell/HP/IBM
cheaper rebrands of HBAs as often suggested on the lists, so we went
with an original LSI 9211-8i which can be flashed to IR or IT mode;
ours was already IT-ready so no work to do here either.

HDDs for us were 4*4Tb; I first asked him to order Hitachi Deskstars,
as I've had some nice experience with their cousins at work servers,
but those happened to be from some bad batch (2 did not even start,
one was okay and another was slow as hell), so we went with "plan B"
and took WD Red 4Tb (WD40EFRX) - from the same owner company now ;)

OS/cache SSDs were Seagate Enterprise SSD 120Gb ST120FN0021 which
were partitioned to only use 100GB overall to match their better
smaller model based on same hardware (not available on our market).
I can say that larger SSDs might also make sense, at least when
this 2*60GB L2ARC gets filled up, there is no noticeable pressure
on the in-RAM metadata used to reference those cached blocks.

What P/N DIMMs did he use ?

16GB ECC overall, as 2* Kingston / KVR1333D3E9S/8G
= 2*8Gb ECC (9*1024Mbyte = 72*1Gbit) DDR3 PC3-10600E-9
NOT_REGISTERED (UNBUFFERED)


Possibly, the shopping list also included an SFF8087-4*SATA splitter
cable with angled connectors; one is included with the server, and
another may or may not be bundled with the HBA depending on the kit
version (retail or OEM), to drive the main disks and the 4*2.5" bay
we needed the 8 cables (though the box currently only has 6 disks and
2 empty small bays). And an USB flash to keep the OI Live image on ;)
In theory the 2 bays might get dedicated to ZIL devices for example,
but I saw nearly no traffic on those mirrored ZIL slices (as seen in
"zpool iostat -v") so the bays are reserved for some other bright
idea. Maybe more L2ARC if that ever gets needed.

My N36L has 8 GB and a Marvell based SATA card driving a StarTech 4 drive external enclosure. It works OK, but the performance is limited and if a drive fails all the drive behind the port expander go away. That is changing for the N54L…
The N54L also has a Marvel card and I will be moving the other one over once I migrate so I’ll have the 4 internal ports, plus 4 more SATA ports on each card. I plan on using 2 internal and 2 external on each card. I also have one of the 4 x 2.5” adapters in the ODD slot. Two of the 2.5” slots have my SSDs. My plan if I went FreeBSD was to use the SSDs as a mirrored pair for OS (about 24 GB) and then 32 GB mirrored for SLOG device and 24 GB on each for L2ARC. Keeping mu usage to 80 GB out of the total 120 GB so that I leave the drive plenty of spare space (I know, not as necessary today as it once was, but I am paranoid). My data drives (6 total, 5 active and 1 hot spare) will be in the 4 internal slots plus 2 external each on their own eSATA port! That leaves me 2 x 2.5” bays unused and 2 x eSATA ports unused for future use. Of course if I go with SmartOS I will boot off of the internal USB and probably put a couple 2.5” drives in for the “zones” pool and st!

ill use
the SSDs for SLOG and L2ARC. OmniOS will probably end up similar to either FreeBSD -or- SmartOS … I have not decided yet.

All my data drives are enterprise class 1 TB. The backup systems (the old N36L) will end up with 2 TB drives all internal as I am not as concerned with performance and resilver times on the backup.
Thanks (and thanks for all of the ZFS discussions you have started).
--
Paul Kraus

Cheers,
Jim Klimov