On Sat, May 24, 2008 at 3:12 AM, Steve Hull <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hello everyone, > > I'm new to ZFS and OpenSolaris, and I've been reading the docs on ZFS (the > pdf "The Last Word on Filesystems" and wikipedia of course), and I'm trying > to understand something. > > So ZFS is self-healing, correct? This is accomplished via parity and/or > metadata of some sort on the disk, right? So it protects against data > corruption, but not against disk failure. Or is it the case that ZFS > intelligently puts the parity and/or metadata on alternate disks to protect > against disk failure, even without a raid array? > > Anyway you can add mirrored, striped, raidz, or raidz2 arrays to the pool, > right? But you can't "effortlessly" grow/shrink this protected array if you > wanted to add a disk or two to increase your protected storage capacity. My > understanding is that if you want to add storage to a raid array, you must > copy all your data off the array, destroy the array, recreate it with your > extra disk(s), then copy all your data back. > > I like the idea of a protected storage pool that can grow and shrink > effortlessly, but if protecting your data against drive failure is not as > effortless, then honestly, what's the point? In my opinion, the ease of use > should be nearly that of the Drobo product. Which brings me to my final > question: is there a gui tool available? I can use command line just like > the next guy, but gui's sure are convenient... > > Thanks for your help! > -Steve > > > This message posted from opensolaris.org > _______________________________________________ > zfs-discuss mailing list > zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss > You're thinking in terms of a home user. ZFS was designed for an enterprise environment. When they add disks, they don't add one disk at a time, it's a tray at a time at the very least. Because of this, they aren't ever copying data off of the array and back on, and no destruction is needed. You just add a raidz/raidz2 at a time striped across your 14 disks (or however large the tray of disks is). The gui is a web interface. Just point your browser at https://localhost:6789 --Tim
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