Opensolaris ZFS file server

[SiM]

After seeing this mentioned in a couple of other threads, I thought it might be worth giving this a go when I get some 2TB hard drives... has anyone tried this? Is it worth the extra effort over a plain Ubuntu server?

[llololloy]

I looked into this a while back. Even got the dvd sent from sun.
In the end though, I didn't trust that in the event of a failure I'd know enough on how to get everything working without data loss.
Also read that solaris is only a good idea when running on sun hardware, not so good on x86/x64 systems.
But then, I still havn't delved into linux yet either.

[alsenior]

I Am still working on it but the machine i was using threw a paddy with opensolaris. Don't worry it is coming it will just be done in a virtual machine i've also been busy with coursework and that has to take precedent atm

[Jay]

I'll give it a shot tomorrow myself I think.

[TAKTAK]

when I get some 2TB hard drives...?

You storage hoarder

You never even used the 1TBs you got (was it the TB's or 320's? )

[SiM]

Thanks everyone. Please share your opinions once you have tried it

You storage hoarder

You never even used the 1TBs you got (was it the TB's or 320's? )

I use the 320s. RAID 5 on my desktop... I sold most of the 1TBs, I have 4 left in my file server, that is it

[aidanjt]

Linux 2.6.29 is to expected to come with BtrFS, which is a direct competitor to ZFS. There's also a migration path from ext3 partitions to BtrFS. So, personally, I'd wait for a BtrFS enabled Linux distro to come along, probably in a year, instead of mucking around with OpenSlowaris.

[SiM]

Linux 2.6.29 is to expected to come with BtrFS, which is a direct competitor to ZFS. There's also a migration path from ext3 partitions to BtrFS. So, personally, I'd wait for a BtrFS enabled Linux distro to come along, probably in a year, instead of mucking around with OpenSlowaris.

That's great news! Hmm... maybe I will wait and set up a Debian server with BtrFS instead... But won't it be risky to use for the first few months - I mean with bugs. ZFS has been out for a couple of years now AFAIK.

[aidanjt]

There's always a risk of bugs, especially with complex filesystems. But BtrFS looks sound, the on disk structure isn't expected to change. And it's probably already had more people running it in it's current pre-linus-merge form than ZFS has in the 2 years of 'stable' release.

[llololloy]

Just wondering did you look any further into this?
I've started reading up on it again but my main worry about not knowing how to fix or repair is what'll put me off.
I've next to no knowledge of linux/unix but been using windows since NT4 came out, so no matter what I'll have to learn a new OS wether I end up going linux or solaris.

[forquare]

Since January this year I've been running OpenSolaris on my home server (4x500GB hard drives, 2GB RAM, C2D 2.6GHz).

I have mirrored the drives into two sets using ZFS, effectively giving me two disks. If any one of the disks die I still have a copy on it's mirror. I didn't opt for a RAIDz purely because BIOS doesn't know how to boot to a RAIDz.

I'm using OpenSolaris 2008.11 and have used the development repo to upgrade to build 111, though I'll be staying there until 2009.06 comes out.

One thing to note is that administering OpenSolaris is a hell of a lot easier to administer Linux (in my opinion), however there is a steep learning curve to begin with. Thinks like services are looked after using SMF which is a heck of a lot different to Linux, but once you know it you'll wonder how on earth you wasted so much time administering services.
ZFS is a dream, though again, it takes some setting up and it different to Linux management, it's a whole different design idea...

Sun has thrown a lot of money into ZFS, they have had both the community and dedicated staff working on it. It is very good, and with decent hardware it's incredibly fast and useful.

If you're still using a P4 system with 512MB RAM, it may run Linux just great, but I wouldn't advertise OpenSolaris to run the same, it's been designed to work well on a decent configuration, I'd suggest 2GB+, though I do have a P3 ThinkPad with 1GB RAM and it's not too shabby!