[pfSense Support] networked file systems
After some contemplation I think I would like to run squid on my pfsense box, but mount the squid cache directory (/var/squid) on an external host. After some research, I believe the following options would provide the best performance with the least overhead, in descending order: 1. AoE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATA_over_Ethernet 2. iSCSI http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISCSI 3. nfs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_File_System_(protocol) I believe pfsense has nfs client ability natively, so no problem there. According to wikipedia, FreeBSD can be an iSCSI initiator, while AoE support on FreeBSD is 3rd party and out of date. pfsense and the FS host will be on the same ethernet, so connectivity is not an issue here. Any thoughts from the list? db - To unsubscribe, e-mail: support-unsubscr...@pfsense.com For additional commands, e-mail: support-h...@pfsense.com Commercial support available - https://portal.pfsense.org
Re: [pfSense Support] networked file systems
On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 4:00 PM, Nathan Eisenberg nat...@atlasnetworks.us wrote: iSCSI is relatively excellent - and as a block device, has great performance. I've had less than pleasing results with AOE in several different use-cases. If you want to share the cache across multiple firewalls, NFS is your only real choice of the 3. I don't plan to access it other than from pfsense. I'm moving it external simply because I'm a lot more comfortable handling my SSD from Linux that I would be from pfsense. I'm referring specifically to TRIM support, IO schedulers and partition alignment. TRIM, I'm pretty sure, is not present in pfsense (not sure about FreeBSD). I know nothing at all about IO schedulers in FreeBSD. I've done some research on partition alignment using fdisk and disklabel, and although it appears doable, I'm left not knowing if I've actually done it right in pfsense. All these are non-issues for me in Linux. nfs is no problem for me to set up, but from what I've read I expected iSCSI and AOE to perform better under load. I'm surprised to read that you had poor results with AOE. I've never used it, but the theory appears to be sound. Can anybody tell me how hard it would be to turn pfsense into an iSCSI initiator? db - To unsubscribe, e-mail: support-unsubscr...@pfsense.com For additional commands, e-mail: support-h...@pfsense.com Commercial support available - https://portal.pfsense.org
Re: Re: [pfSense Support] networked file systems
On Wed, 2010-10-27 at 16:08 -0600, David Burgess wrote: I don't plan to access it other than from pfsense. I'm moving it external simply because I'm a lot more comfortable handling my SSD from Linux that I would be from pfsense. I'm referring specifically to TRIM support, IO schedulers and partition alignment. TRIM, I'm pretty sure, is not present in pfsense (not sure about FreeBSD). I know nothing at all about IO schedulers in FreeBSD. I've done some research on partition alignment using fdisk and disklabel, and although it appears doable, I'm left not knowing if I've actually done it right in pfsense. All these are non-issues for me in Linux. If you want to take advantage of Linux' TRIM support, you should be using NFS. TRIM support (AFAIK) requires underlying knowledge of the filesystem or at least the block allocation... iSCSI hides all of those details, as it merely exposes one large chunk of disk blocks to the client. -Adam Thompson athom...@c3a.ca attachment: winmail.dat- To unsubscribe, e-mail: support-unsubscr...@pfsense.com For additional commands, e-mail: support-h...@pfsense.com Commercial support available - https://portal.pfsense.org
Re: Re: [pfSense Support] networked file systems
On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 5:59 PM, Adam Thompson athom...@c3a.ca wrote: If you want to take advantage of Linux' TRIM support, you should be using NFS. TRIM support (AFAIK) requires underlying knowledge of the filesystem or at least the block allocation... iSCSI hides all of those details, as it merely exposes one large chunk of disk blocks to the client. Thanks for pointing that out. That may have crossed my mind once, but I had forgotten about that. db - To unsubscribe, e-mail: support-unsubscr...@pfsense.com For additional commands, e-mail: support-h...@pfsense.com Commercial support available - https://portal.pfsense.org
