where to install zfs host OS?

A

af22

Gawd
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Jun 21, 2010
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Need a quick pep talk. I'm rebuilding my zacate home server from server08 to zfs. I have the following hard drives:

2x 1TB
4x 2TB

I'm worried about where I install the OS. I want to create a zfs raid5 pool with the 4x 2tb drives, i know it's best practice to NOT install the OS on the data pool

If i install the OS on the 1tb drive, they are pushing 2.5 years old now and i'm worried about future drive failures.

If i loose the OS drive, can i reinstall my OS and have it see the existing pool again? Could i use ZFS to put the 2x 1TB in a mirror so that the OS has redundancy?

would it be eve possible to create a pool with both the 2tb and 1tb drives?
 
Hi,

AFAIK, you can't even install the OS on a RAIDZ1. You can however install the OS on one of the 1 TB drives and than add the second 1 TB drive to mirror the OS (I've done the same thing, but instead of 1 TB drives, I used 2x 60 GB 2.5" drives as the OS typically needs only a few GB..).

I don't know which OS you had in mind to replace MS Server 2008 with ("ZFS" is a file system, not an OS), but here is setup guide on how to mirror the boot drive that was written for Solaris Express 11 and I can confirm that it works well with OpenIndiana 148.

-TLB
 
I was thinking maybe solaris with napp-it.

I thought about installing to USB stick (to free up more sata ports to make a bigger pool). But once again, how do i put redundancy on my USB stick.

I find that when i use a software mirror (windows raid1) solution to mirror the bootable os drive for windows, when i try to boot the secondary plex, it always gives me a BSOD and never works. I'm worried this might happen to solaris since the raid is copying over the data, and not the important required boot guid partitions and information.
 
Just for clarification from our ZFS experts, is the recommended setup for all-in-one:

supermicro motherboard RAID1 of (2x160GB hdds): - Install ESX-i + ZFS on these.

controller card: -> pass through to ZFS, install all future VMs on ZFS pool.

?
 
I wouldn't bother raid'ing the local datastore. Just back up the SAN VM somewhere... Install esxi on a usb drive if you want...
 
Installing a full featured OS like Nexenta, OpenIndiana or SE11 on a USB stick is

- not supported while it may work
- not suggested because not very reliably and slow like pain

use any small sata disk (any hd or small ssd) instead
If you use ESXi/ all-in-one you can install ESXi + local datastore on a disk
while on a USB stick you can only install ESXi and need a separate datastore disk

in future with USB3 and SSD like sticks, this may change
(advantage: you do not need a sata slot for OS, but with any serious storage server you want
a SAS controller with more slots some time)

With storage use only, its not a data problem beside reinstalling OS if you loose a boot disk.
Just re-import a ZFS pool with all ZFS settings stored in the pool.
 
dude...save yourself ALOT of headache buy two cheap/small 2 1/2" laptop drives and install the o/s on them as a mirrored pair.

job done.
 
af22 said:
If i loose the OS drive, can i reinstall my OS and have it see the existing pool again?
Click to expand...

Yes, you can reinstall a fresh OS (that supports at least your pool version) to a fresh drive and do a 'zpool import -f <poolname>'. You may have some other services to reconfigure, but your storage would be all there.

Many here feel that the downtime and the reconfiguration time makes OS drive redundancy beneficial. I would say, at a minimum, to make a drive image of your OS drive from time to time, in case of failure.
 
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