Dear internets, I've got an old SunFire X2100M2 with 6-8 GBytes ECC RAM, which I wanted to put into use with Linux, using the Linux VServer patch (an analogon to zones), and 2x 2 TByte nearline (WD RE4) drives. It occured to me that the 1U case had enough space to add some SSDs (e.g. 2-4 80 GByte Intel SSDs), and the power supply should be able to take both the 2x SATA HDs as well as 2-4 SATA SSDs, though I would need to splice into existing power cables.
I also have a few LSI and an IBM M1015 (potentially reflashable to IT mode) adapters, so having enough ports is less an issue (I'll probably use an LSI with 4x SAS/SATA for 4x SSD, and keep the onboard SATA for HDs, or use each 2x for SSD and HD). Now there are multiple configurations for this. Some using Linux (roof fs on a RAID10, /home on RAID 1) or zfs. Now zfs on Linux probably wouldn't do hybrid zfs pools (would it?) and it wouldn't be probably stable enough for production. Right? Assuming I wont't have to compromise CPU performance (it's an anemic Opteron 1210 1.8 GHz, dual core, after all, and it will probably run several 10 of zones in production) and sacrifice data integrity, can I make e.g. LSI SAS3442E directly do SSD caching (it says something about CacheCade, but I'm not sure it's an OS-side driver thing), as it is supposed to boost IOPS? Unlikely shot, but probably somebody here would know. If not, should I go directly OpenIndiana, and use a hybrid pool? Should I use all 4x SATA SSDs and 2x SATA HDs to do a hybrid pool, or would this be an overkill? The SSDs are Intel SSDSA2M080G2GC 80 GByte, so no speed demons either. However, they've seen some wear and tear and none of them has keeled over yet. So I think they'll be good for a few more years. How would you lay out the pool with OpenIndiana in either case to maximize IOPS and minimize CPU load (assuming it's an issue)? I wouldn't mind to trade 1/3rd to 1/2 of CPU due to zfs load, if I can get decent IOPS. This is terribly specific, I know, but I figured somebody had tried something like that with an X2100 M2, it being a rather popular Sun (RIP) Solaris box at the time. Or not. Thanks muchly, in any case. -- Eugen _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
