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ZFS or LVM basic setup

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n00b
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Guys my current file server is a Dell precision 390 which runs 5 Samsung 2TB drives in a raid 5 along with a perc 5i controller. I run Windows server 2008 R2 I'm wanting to retire my perc 5i the card puts off a ton of heat in favor of an HBA style controller where I will just pass the drives through to the OS as JBODS and use sofware raid. I would be running Centos if I rebuild our file server I've heard software raid uses a lot of cpu this box is an intel core2duo 1.86 with 4 gigs of ram do you guys think I have enough cpu to run sofware raid? BTW I'm going to be moving to an IBM M1015 rebranded LSI.
 
do you guys think I have enough cpu to run sofware raid?
Click to expand...

Plenty to spare.

On linux you will generally have less than 10% of a single core cpu usage during reads and writes with basically any CPU produced after 2005.. I know because I have multiple raid6 servers here at work. Some with 2GHz Opterons from 2003. It will be higher during a rebuild but it will also use more than 1 core if you have a modern enough kernel and have multithreaded raid4/5/6 enabled.
 
Windows because of the lack or ineffective write back stripe cache (probably designed this way to avoid dataloss) is (every time I have tested this) significantly slower on the same hardware and has also required way more CPU usage.
 
I played aroud with windows software raid back in the 2003 server days and it was pretty much garbage.
 
Guys I need to ask for more advice I'm wanting to migrate away from Windows Server 2008 R2 using a perc 5i to a setup that will feature an IBM M1015. The problem is I don't know if I should go ZFS or LVM using CentOS 6.3. This will be used as our main media server running 5 Samsung 2TB drives also the box will run other services such as openvpn, dhcp, and maybe some network monitoring tools. I know about Open Indiana the box I'm using runs an Intel Core2duo 1.86 with 4 gigs of ram and it maxes at 8 gigs I've heard ZFS is a ram hog and as of right now we have about 6 Terabytes of data. Also there is confusion at least for me on what OS to run ZFS on BSD or OI. I see OI as a storage appliance and not a multi purpose server like BSD or a CentOS. Also I'm a Windows guy I've just started getting into Linux and other Unix OS's so far I can move around ok in Centos and I've mainly only used it so far for creating network routers. So I guess I'm looking for general advice should I go with Linux and LVM or should I get into ZFS if so what OS should I use and does my system have enough horse power for ZFS?
 
Hmm unless you are planning to go ECC (meaning upgrade that box) then the benefits of ZFS aren't large enough to warrant picking it over LVM+mdadm for home use. You are largely storing media which is far more resilient to corruption than other file types. So in your shoes I would probably go the LVM route and move on with it.

If this was for work use though I would upgrade the box and go with ZFS on Solaris.
 
I would use LVM or MADM on centos. If you want ZFS find an OS that supports it natively.

ZFS isn't a ram "hog" per say, but it can speed up reads and writes as you add more memory. its more important if you're doing things like hosting virtual machines on the server. If you're just serving media a few gigabytes of memory (4+) is enough.

Your system would have enough HP for ZFS, though you may have bottlenecks elsewhere.
 
The question you're not explaining to us is why you need RAID? Uptime or performance?
 
Ok guys I'm going to start researching Centos It's funny you mentioned virtual machines I need to also get my ESXI lab up and running. I will be doing 4 Seagate Constellation drives on another core2duo 2.6 I have laying around it has 8 gigs of ram for that setup I will try OI. BTW I use raid for both uptime and performance the majority of my data though is all read
 
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