Backup system rebuild planning

[nuclearsnake]

Howdy!

So I inherited our backup server, and been tasked with rebuilding it. From a hardware point of view it consists of

SUPERMICRO X8DTN+
2 x Xeon 2.26Ghz
2 x 80 GB WD
8 x 2 TB Western Digital WD2002FYPS SATA
1 x 3ware 9650SE-16ML 16 Port SATA Raid

When I first got the machine, it was built without the two 80GB drives, with / and /boot on a raid1 array on the 3ware card, and a /backup raid5 array for the rest of the space. The /backup was xfs, and it would lockup, or the controller would error out, or a number of other isses daily. We RMA'd the card 2 times, and it still happened.

After deciding to rebuilt it, added the two 80Gb drives as a raid1 array connected to the mobo, and flushed the old 3ware config an rebuilt that as a new raid5 array using 100% of all the disks. As we are an Ubuntu shop, so I did some testing with 10.04LTS and the zfs-fuse driver *ducks* and the performance was okay for our vmdk backups.

I've since read that zfs should see the physical disks, and not the raid5 array presented by the controller... is that true?

Now we've started to backup other system's file level to this machine disk performance is horrible and doesn't cut it anymore. We use rsnapshot, and the cp -al is taking forever

I'm looking for suggestions for a file system I should use, what a good block size would be, and any other performance tips I should know about. The major limiting factor is that it must work with Ubuntu 10.04

 

[ghost6303]

I've since read that zfs should see the physical disks, and not the raid5 array presented by the controller... is that true?

ZFS is a software RAID implimentation, so if you use ZFS with a RAID controller hosting an array, you are essentially having a RAID of a RAID, which circumvents much of the data protection ZFS has built in. actually, its more like having a 1 disk ZFS RAID, on top of the hardware RAID. you should set the 3ware card to just passthru the connections to the OS instead of doing the RAID iteslf, or get rid of ZFS and just use the hardware RAID as a single regular disk.

 

[nuclearsnake]

you should set the 3ware card to just passthru the connections to the OS instead of doing the RAID iteslf, or get rid of ZFS and just use the hardware RAID as a single regular disk.

What file system would you recommend to using for 12 2TB Western digital drives under ubuntu 10.04 for 70% VMware backups, and 30% file level backups?

 

[war9200]

ext4 (since you already have a RAID card)

 

[vraa]

I would not touch zfs-fuse with a 10 ft pole.
You are talking about some data integrity shit man
I used it on Ubuntu 10.10 at home, but I'm not trusting $$$ on it
You be smart, use sub.mesa's ZFS Guru and give ZFS a shot with the slick web interface
Do some benchmarks too, see if those drives are 'READY TO DIE'

 

[war9200]

I would not touch zfs-fuse with a 10 ft pole.
You are talking about some data integrity shit man
I used it on Ubuntu 10.10 at home, but I'm not trusting $$$ on it
You be smart, use sub.mesa's ZFS Guru and give ZFS a shot with the slick web interface
Do some benchmarks too, see if those drives are 'READY TO DIE'

Agree 100%