Hi folks. I'm looking at putting together a 16-disk ZFS array as a server, and after reading Richard Elling's writings on the matter, I'm now left wondering if it'll have the performance we expect of such a server. Looking at his figures, 5x 3-disk RAIDZ sets seems like it *might* be made to do what we want (saturate a GigE link), but not without some tuning....
Am I right in my understanding of relling's small, random read model? For mirrored configurations, read performance is proportional to the number of disks. Write performance is proportional to the number of mirror sets. For parity configurations, read performance is proportional to the number of RAID sets. Write performance is roughly the same. Clearly, there are elements of the model that don't apply to our sustained read/writes, so does anyone have any guidance (theoretical or empirical) on what we could expect in that arena? I've seen some references to a different ZFS mode of operation for sustained and/or contiguous transfers. What should I know about them? Finally, some requirements I have in speccing up this server: My requirements: . Saturate a 1GigE link for sustained reads _and_ writes ... (long story... let's just imagine uncompressed HD video) . Do it cheaply My strong desires: . ZFS for its reliability, redundancy, flexibility, and ease of use . Maximise the amount of usable space My resources: . a server with 16x 500GB SATA drives usable for RAID This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
