There is another option. I'll call it "grow into your storage." Pre-ZFS, for most systems you would need to allocate the storage well in advance of its use. For the 7xFLX380 case using SVM and UFS, you would typically setup the FLX380 LUNs, merge them together using SVM, and newfs. Growing is somewhat difficult for that size of systems because UFS has some smallish limits (16 TBytes per file system, less for older Solaris releases). Planning this in advance is challenging and the process for growing existing file systems or adding new file systems would need careful attention.
By contrast, with ZFS we can add vdevs to the zpool on the fly to an existing zpool and the file systems can immediately use the new space. The reliability of devices is measured in operational hours. So, for a fixed reliability metric one way to improve your real-life happiness is to reduce the operational hours. Putting these together, it makes sense to only add disks as you need the space. Keep the disks turned off, until needed, to lengthen their life. In other words, grow into your storage. This doesn't work for everyone, or every situation, but ZFS makes it an easy, viable option to consider. -- richard _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
