Ubuntu files server wtih zfs

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Ubuntu files server wtih zfs

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krj15489

Senior Member

6. August 2009 @ 10:39

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I have a file server currently running windows with a couple of tb's of data. I recently learned about zfs and I would not likie to switch the server over to ubuntu. But before I do this I was wanting to know if anyone here at ad had any experience with setting up a system using zfs?

How does it perform? Are read and writes similar in speed to riad? There are not very many good benchmarks out there for a raidz. I would be getting two more 1.5tb drives and setup a raidz with three of them. Is a zfs setup reliable? Would you prefer a hardware raid card over zfs? Any input would be great. I am still trying to decide if I should get a raid card and just set this up in windows of switch to ubuntu and use zfs.

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varnull

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6. August 2009 @ 13:51

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I would ALWAYS use hardware raid on a server.. I haven't used zfs for the simple reason software raid is fine in principle.. but what when something goes wrong??

plus.. if you have replaced as many 1.5tb drives within 6 months of manufacture date as I have in the last few months you wouldn't go anywhere near them.. buy 500's and run striped hardware raid.. the more drives the better...

I never bother with raid.. just scatter the data around on as many drives as possible.. hardware failure still causes data loss.. better to minimise the risk by using as many physical devices as possible..
Banks use 100 gig drives scsi or sata.. in mirrored arrays.. they don't use raid or 1.5tb drives.... I wonder why?

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OzMick

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6. August 2009 @ 15:37

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Hardware raid any day. And while you're at it, buy at least one identical spare controller for when the main one dies, at least gives you a chance to recover data before upgrading everything (after all, if 1 drive has reached its MTBF, the others probably aren't far behind...).

And janrocks has a point about the use of 100GB drives. Ever wonder what the letter "I" in RAID stands for? $/GB just doesn't add up with the massive drives, better to go the lowest $/GB you can get and just get more of them, that is what RAID is all about.

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krj15489

Senior Member

7. August 2009 @ 21:41

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Thanks for the replies. I will wait to upgrade my hard drives. Right now I am using a couple of drives and have to back up of my data on other drives. I would like to be able to automatically sync them whenever I make a change. I have used unison a little but i would like to be able to do that automatically because i will forget to do it. Is there an easy way to do this?

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varnull

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8. August 2009 @ 06:52

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Bargain central in IDE drives at the moment as manufacturers seek to dispose of whet they see as "old" tech .. I can get Hitachi 300 gig drives for £37.98 from my local shop.. shame I'm too broke to even buy a six pack right now.

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This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 8. August 2009 @ 06:52

krj15489

Senior Member

9. August 2009 @ 18:50

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Originally posted by varnull:
shame I'm too broke to even buy a six pack right now.

That sucks. I probably will be too in a few weeks because I am starting college. Also I have an unrelated question. On my laptop in xp i can get between 4.5 and 5 hours of battery life but with ubuntu I can only get 4 hours. Do you have any suggestions for getting better battery life?

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krj15489

Senior Member

15. August 2009 @ 16:34

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I have my server now switched over to the 64bit version of ubuntu and most things are working great. But I am having a few problems with grub. Whenever i have my ide hard drives plugged in grub will give me ar error 17. but when i unplug those hard drives i have no problem booting. my other problem is that grub installed itself to the wrong drive. it is now on my tb drive and i want to switch it to ext3 but i dont want to do that until i can install grub to my os drive. what is the best way to take care of these problems?

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varnull

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15. August 2009 @ 19:51

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I honestly don't know.. every release of ubuntu seems broken in weird ways.. guess that's why us server people use debian or slackware.

You should be able to check the drives.. specifically looking for any duplicate boot/grub directories or anything to do with boot processes. menu.list is a starting point.. see what is loading.. /etc/fstab is a another good place to start looking for odd things with drive mounting.

That's about all I can think of which could be causing the no boot nonsense with the ide drives connected. Can you tell I don't like ubuntu yet?? With servers you need to be in control and ubuntu takes that away.. try debian squeeze or the latest slackware (be prepared to set it all up manually) and ditch the ntfs garbage asap yeah?

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This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 15. August 2009 @ 19:54

krj15489

Senior Member

15. August 2009 @ 20:48

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thanks for the advice. for the ide drive problem i think i will try an ide card and see if that works. I will check for other grub directories, but i know my fstab is good. I have gone through it and set up the mount points manually for all my drives after i formatted them to ext3. the only ntfs i have left is my tb drive and i have not changed it because for some stupid reason it is the boot drive. can i reinstall grub if i format the boot drive(not the same as os drive)?

I understand why you dont like ubuntu but i have not had many problems with 9.04. it has worked great on my laptop and other old computers but i cannot say the same about past releases. this is the first version that has worked well for me.

But other than those problems the server is working great. i seem to be getting faster transfer speeds over my network compared to windows.

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