THe last system I set up with ZFS, I used a script. Today, when trying a system with different device types, I encountered a limitation of that script. I need to fix it. In the above script, NUM takes on the value of what digits appear in the string of I. Given that DISKS contains both ada0 and da0, two disks will get the same value for $I. That’s a problem. I need […]
Problem with disk numbering in my ZFS creation script Read More »
The traditional thoughts on ZFS are to have arrays which are a power-of-2 when it comes to number of disks. That means 2, 4, 8, etc. But for raidz1, that would be 3, 5, 9. For my choice of raidz2, it would be 4, 6, and 10. In the system I’m building up now, I have an 8-port LSI SATA/SAS 9211-8i 6Gb/s card. I can add two more HDD by attaching them to
ZFS: raidz2 with 8 or 10 disks? Read More »
My gateway is dying. My file server is getting full. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been dealing with aging infrastructure. My development server started acting up and was showing signs of age. This aging desktop box contained 80GB HDD, which means it’s probably 6 or 7 years old. That’s getting on in age. It’s been replaced by a much gruntier server. After completeing that work, I have to consider my gateway, which
Gateway getting old; File server getting full Read More »
I was trying to recompile sysutils/bacula-client on a FreeBSD 8.4 jail when I encountered some perplexing link errors. It took me a while to figure it out, but with the help of some IRC conversation, we figured it out. I started off by deleting the old (quite old) port: bacula-client-5.0.3 Then I recompiled: cd /usr/ports/sysutils/bacula-client && make install clean The errors in question are: I tried recompiling a few ports, such as gettext.
Compiling bacula client gives link errors Read More »
One of the challenges of providing hands-on demonstrations is giving everyone their own sandbox to play in. I don’t want people to spend time on installing software. I want people to learn about the software in question, specifically Bacula. With this in mind, I’ve been building up a solution based on FreeBSD 9.1, ZFS, and jails. My solution is pretty nifty, but I don’t think it’s anything special. The key is simplicity. The
The Bacula Tutorial jail server Read More »
I’m about to start setting up a ZFS-only box using FreeBSD 8.2. There will be no UFS volumes in this system. Every previous server I have set up has always booted from a gmirror’d UFS system first, then mounted a ZFS array. This time, everything will be on ZFS. I’ve described this server previously when I first chose the parts back in January. Now, the push is on to get this system installed
Creating a ZFS-only box – the first look Read More »
I’m still seeing a 50% performance hit when I try bonnie++. It’s pretty clear. One system is getting 456MB/s sequential read. While the other is doing 265MB/s. Both machines are using the same type of HDD: The 3TB Toshiba DT01ACA300. The faster server This is on bulldog, the faster machine but destined to have fewer HDD. All HDD are directly connected to the motherboard. $ bonnie++ Writing a byte at a time…done Writing
Even bonnie++ shows the 50% performance hit Read More »
From time to time, my Bacula – space and time website shows some old jobs that need to be copied to tape. Stuff from 100 days or more. There’s no reason to copy stuff that old to tape. It’s already been copied to tape. So why does it appear? Last night I swapped some tapes in the tape library. This morning they would have been used and recycled. I’ll bet that those tapes
Deleting old Bacula Volumes Read More »
Wyze uses this tuning on his 2GB NAS box. # Dynamically adjust write limit based on previous txg commits to attempt # to maintain a 2-second commit time vfs.zfs.txg.synctime_ms=”2000″ # Set a minimum write limit of 50MB which is slightly more than the default vfs.zfs.write_limit_min=”50M” # Default vfs.zfs.write_limit_shift appears to be “3” which on a system # with 2GB RAM such as this one results in a write_limit_max of 256MB, which # is
I think I’m now at the point where I have all the hardware assembled and it’s ready for testing. Now I’m trying to determine what set of fio tests to run. If you know of a set of standard tests, or just have some of your own, please let me know in the comments. The hardware The disks I have assembled are all available via the LSI 9211-8i. The basic hardware specs are:
The hardware is ready. What tests to run? Read More »