On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 7:08 AM, Thomas Burgess <wonsl...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I'm about to build a ZFS based NAS and i'd like some suggestions about how to > set up my drives. > > The case i'm using holds 20 hot swap drives, so i plan to use either 4 vdevs > with 5 drives or 5 vdevs with 4 drives each (and a hot spare inside the > machine) > > > The motherboard i'm getting has 4 pci-x slots 2 @ 133 Mhz and 2 @ 100 Mhz > > I was planning on buying 3 of the famous AOC-SAT2-MV8 cards which would give > me more than enough sata slots. I'll also have 6 onboard slots. > > I also plan on using 2 sata=> compact flash adapters with 16 gb compact flash > cards for the os.
For the OS, I'd drop the adapter/compact-flash combo and use the "stripped down" Kingston version of the Intel x25m MLC SSD. If you're not familiar with it, the basic scoup is that this drive contains half the flash memory (40Gb) *and* half the controller channels (5 versus 10) of the Intel drive - and so, performance is basically a little less than half although read performance is still very good. For more info, google for hardware reviews. This product is still a little hard to find, froogle for the following part numbers: Desktop Bundle - SNV125-S2BD/40GB Bare drive - SNV125-S2/40GB Currently you can find the bare drive for under $100. This is bound to give you better performance and guaranteed compatibility compared to adapters and compact flash. The problem with adapters is that, although the price is great, compatibility and build quality are all over the map and YMMV considerably. You would not be happy if you saved $20 on the adapter/flash combo and ended up with nightmare reliability. The great thing about 2.5" SSDs is that mounting is simply a question of duct tape or velcro! [ well .... almost ... but you can velcro them onto the sidewall of you case ] So you can use all your available 3.5" disk drive bays for ZFS disks. > > My main question is what is the best way to lay out the vdevs? > > Does it really matter how i lay them out considering i only have gigabit > network? > > Thanks for any help. > Regards, -- Al Hopper Logical Approach Inc,Plano,TX a...@logical-approach.com Voice: 972.379.2133 Timezone: US CDT OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB) Member - Apr 2005 to Mar 2007 http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/ogb/ogb_2005-2007/ _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
