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OS and Filesystem Migration

D

Draugauth

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 29, 2007
Messages
302
I am nearing that point where I can finally blast Win7 from my "server" and put on Linux. I would like to use ZFS with it and am thinking about possibly Ubuntu as that is where my linux server experience is from.

Currently the "server" is running Win7 Home Premium and using the NTFS filesystem for the raid array.

Raid Controller is the Highpoint RocketRaid 3560. I am using R6. I would like to step up to a faster more robust solution than R6 but that would require a Raid type that can be expanded.

I would be looking at converting from R6 to the new raid type within 3 months. I just need to purchase the 5 in 3 bay and 5 more 2TB drives.

So if I it is recommended to wait on the ZFS conversion until I can install the extra drives I have no problem with that.

What are your suggestions? Mind you I do plan on other upgrades over the next year.
I plan on going to a 77 series motherboard and i5 with at least 16GB of ram if not more. And plan on upgrading my Raid Controller with a SAS/Sata3 HBA so I can use expanders.

Thank you for your time and effort in assisting me with my project.
 
The point of ZFS is maximum safety, for a low price. If you use fuse linux, it might not be very stable, it might have bugs. Until zfs fuse linux is stable, I recommend you use a linux solution only. Why not use normal hardware raid and xfs or ext4? Lot of people use it.
 
Well I am using a normal hardware raid controller however I was considering using something like raidz30 which would be a R6 with 3 parity drives instead of 2 and stripping to improve performance but I am still doing research on all of that.

I am also considering OpenIndiana now as well. I would like to deal more with enterprise level style OS's to get my groove back on IT stuff. But it has been a long time since I did any real IT work outside of private networks which are basic.
 
Ok so after thinking and pondering I have decided I will change the file system once I buy the new 5 in 3 hotswap bay and 5 more 2TB drives.

Question though. ZFS can you expand it? If not then I may stick with just R6 since the raid controller can expand. Maybe create a second R6 and go with R60. How would I set that up? use the hardware controller for the 2 R6's and then the OS to create stripping? Would that cost me my data if not backed up?
 
For large volumes (I plan on my next server having 100+ TB) what block size and sector size should I use?
 
Draugauth said:
For large volumes (I plan on my next server having 100+ TB) what block size and sector size should I use?
Click to expand...

What types of files will be on the server? What size will the average files be? How many people are going to be hitting this box at a time on average? Do you want just one single filesystem? What drives will you be using? Are you planning on using compression? Dedupe (Smaller blocksize = more entries in the dedup tables)
 
ranging from applications to BR ISO's for the systems inside my home (currently I have around 10 systems that can connect to the server give or take 1). For the cloud I imagine that will be mostly pictures and drafts of books that the family writes and wants each other to read for opinions etc. For the backups it would be complete systems backing up. Probably around 15-20 computers doing backups off and on throughout any given week.

going to be using either 2TB or 3TB drives for the next server. This one will be 2TB drives. 9 total on the raid controller.
 
So can ZFS raid array be expanded? Should I go with 2 R6 arrays to create a R60 array? I don't mind giving up 4 drives for parity just to have extra protection.

Also what should I select as block size and sector size for a multitude of file types/sizes as well as upwards of 20 people connecting at once (won't happen often but it could happen with the family cloud service and backup services I am going to provide for my family and possibly closest friends).
 
Also for my next server build do you recommend adding SSD's in as a "cache" to improve the read/write speeds? Been seeing that the newer raid cards include this feature.
 
Ok found out that ZFS raid arrays can not be expanded (thanks Odditory!).

I guess I could try a R6+0 on my raid controller. Not sure how I would go about doing it though. Going to have to do some testing after my next reboot since the Web UI stopped working once I plugged in a network cable directly to the raid controller.
 
Each zpool is built up of a group of disks. Say, a group of eight disks, configured as raidz2. You can have one group, or several groups in a zpool. You can always add a new group to your zpool, so yes, you can expand your zpool. But you can never change the number of disks in a group. You can never remove a group. These groups are called vdev. If you want to change the number of disks in a vdev, you must destroy your zpool and recreate it.

If you are going for ZFS, you should avoid hardware raid, because those messes up ZFS data corruption repair functionality. No point of using ZFS then, if you use a hardware raid card.

You can not nest vdevs in ZFS. You can not have a raidz2 built up of mirrors, say. One zpool might consist of several different vdevs (one raidz2, one mirror, etc) but you can not insert a mirror inside a raidz2.

Regarding block size, dont think about that. Only thing you should consider is: If you have a modern disk that uses 4K blocks, instead of 512byte blocks, then performance might suffer if you have wrong block size. When you create a zpool, you can not alter the block size afterwards.
 
Yeah that's the problem. Most of the time I would be upgrading the array 1-2 drives at a time.

I'll stick to a hardware solution and use another filesystem then that is more mature on Linux (still haven't decided on Netrunner or Ubuntu yet. Netrunner is a modified Ubuntu distro so they are basically the same)

The reason for the block size is that I don't want to end up screwing things up as I hit 20TB+ for total storage.

Again thank you for all the advice. I really do appreciate it a lot.
 
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