Dude, How much is your time worth?
Consider the engineering effort going into every Sun Server. Any system from Sun is more than sufficient for a home server. You want more disks, then buy one with more slots. Done. Search "http://store.sun.com"; for the item that matches your needs and run with it. Sun currently has a promotion on X4150 Servers... That will easily be able to serve NFS, SunRay, etc... to your home. I believe when you factor in all the hardware (motherboard, cpu, memory, disks, cabling, power supply, case, etc.) and all your time (installation, testing, debugging, testing, hardware DOAs, testing, waiting for replacements, testing, repairing/replacing faulty "consumer" grade drives, testing...), I think you will quickly find the current X4150 server to be a compelling deal. I currently own/use an X2100 server for the same purpose without issues. Cheers, Joel. Proud to be "Flying Our Own Dog Food" ;-) Decision #1: Buy an engineered box. http://www.sun.com/servers/x64/x4150/ http://shop.sun.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/Sun_NorthAmerica-Sun_Store_US-Site/en_US/-/USD/ViewStandardCatalog-Browse?CategoryName=HID-2133736376&CategoryDomainName=Sun_NorthAmerica-Sun_Store_US-SunCatalog * Quad-Core Intel, 4GB RAM ... Promotional Priced... $2035. Get a real/tested box. Forget the hassles. Decision #2: * With disks, you get what you pay for.... What does Sun use... * Be careful at/beyond 1TB for Boot Drives.... Decision #3: * What is your data production requirements? * Keep in mind RAID-Z2 with 3 disks is essentially 3way mirror... * Have you considered Mirrored? * How many disks are you planning on having in the system? * Performance, Space, Protection: Choose 2. Decision #4: * See Decision #3, above. Cheers, Joel. On 01/07/09 03:29, Peter Korn wrote: > I'm looking to do the same thing - home NAS with ZFS. > > I'm debating several routes/options, and I'd appreciate opinions from folks > here. > > My system will primarily be a file & music server, serving CIFS and some NFS > as well as driving multiple concurrent audio streams via SqueezeCenter, and > perhaps eventually videos via something like MythTV. I'm also contemplating > making it a Sun Ray server. I don't want to run out of disk space for a long > time - I'd like >= 3TB to start. > > Decision #1: AMD vs. Intel > I'm drawn to quad core, perhaps for silly reasons. I'm also drawn to AMD > (for price and RAM performance). And finally I'm drawn to ASUS motherboards > because there are so many options in the HCL. I want lots of SATA ports and > support for 8GB RAM > - option a: ASUS M3A-H/HDMI ($...@newegg) with AMD Phenom 9600 ($...@newegg) > - option b: ASUS P5K Deluxe ($...@newegg) with Intel Quad Q6600 ($...@newegg) > Any reason to go with Intel? Any better option going the AMD route (perhaps > the Quad core chip offers no value?) > > Decision #2: 1.5TB Seagate vs. 1TB WD (or someone else) > I've heard lots of stories about Seagate reliability being poor, especially > in RAID configurations. WD has a good reputation, especially with their more > expensive E3 drives. Reliability is a concern both from a time point of view > (spending time getting/installing replacements and downtime until it is in), > as well as potential data reliability if a multiple-failure occurs. > - option a: 3 1.5TB Seagate drives (in Raid-Z) or 4 1.5TB in Raid-Z2 > ($...@newegg) > - option b: 4 1TB WD drives (in Raid-Z) or 5 in Raid-Z2 > - option b(1): WD RE3 drives ($150 via eBay seller) > - option b(2): WD Caviar Black ($...@newegg) > - option b(3): WD Caviar Green ($...@newegg) > Do I loose much in performance going Green vs. Black? Do I gain anything in > reliability? Anything measurable (given other system components) in power > savings? > > Decision #3: Raid-Z vs. Raid-Z2 > I understand that with very large drives, the chance of a momentary block > read failure is near (or in excess) of the 1/# blocks on disk (so you would > likely get one of these if reading/copying the entire 1-1.5TB), and while > subsequent re-tries would fix this it would be seen as a RAID failure in the > moment. But the more I read up on ZFS, the less likely a double-fault > situation appears that it'd occur, given the fix-on-error-detection and > continuous cleaning of the disk. > - option a: Raid-Z > - option b: Raid-Z2 > > Decision #4: file system layout > I'd like to have ZFS root mirrored. Do we simply use a portion of the > existing disks for this, or add two disks just for root? Use USB-2 flash as > those 2 disks? And where does swap go? > - option a: [3 disks] > - option a(1): reserve ~50GB from all three, ZFS mirror across all three, > and put swap into that 50GB > - option a(2): reserve ~50GB from all three, ZFS mirror across first two, > and put swap into the third 50GB (rather large that...) > - option a(3): reserve ~50GB from all three, ZFS mirror across first two, > and put swap into that 50GB; ignore the 50GB in the third > > - option b: [4 disks] > - option b(1): reserve ~25GB from all four, ZFS pool/mirror across all > four, and put swap into that pooled 50GB > - option b(2): reserve ~50GB from all four, ZFS mirror across first two, > and put swap into the third 50GB (rather large that...) and ignore the fourth > 50GB > - option b(3): reserve ~50GB from all four, ZFS mirror across first two, > and put swap into the third 50GB (rather large that...) and ignore the fourth > 50GB > - option b(4): reserve ~50GB from all four, ZFS mirror across first two, > and put swap into that 50GB (rather large that...); ignore the third and > fourth 50GB > > - option c: [5 disks] > - option c(n): you get the idea... > > - option d: [n disks + 2 "root" disks] > - option d(1) use some small cheap pair of SATA (or even IDE) disks for > mirrored root/swap > - option d(2) use ~8GB USB2 flash drives for mirrored root/swap (and place > things like /opt into the larger "data" array) > > > Many thanks for your feedback! > > Peter > _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
