Thanks for all the answers .. Please find more questions below :)

- Good to know EMC filers do not have end2end checksums! What about netapp ?

- Any other limitations of the big two NAS vendors as compared to zfs ?

- I still don't have my original question answered, I want to somehow assess
the reliability of that zfs storage stack. If there's no hard data on that,
then if any storage expert who works with lots of systems can give his
"impression" of the reliability compared to the big two, that would be great
!

- Regarding building my own hardware, I don't really want to do that (I am
scared enough to put our small but very important data on zfs). If you know
of any Dell box (we usually deal with dell) that can host say 10 drives
minimum (for expandability) and that is *known* to work very well with
nexentaStor. Then please please let me know about it. I am unconfident about
the hardware quality of the pogoLinux solution, but forced to go with it for
nexenta. The Sun thumper solution is too expensive for me, I am looking for
a solution around 10k$. I don't need all those disks or RAM in thumper!

- Assuming I plan to host a maximum of 8TB uesable data on the pogo box as
seen in: http://www.pogolinux.com/quotes/editsys?sys_id=8498
  * Would I need one or two of those Quad core xeon CPUs ?
  * How much RAM is needed ?
  * I'm planning on using Segate 1TB sata 7200 disks. Is that crazy ? The
EMC guy insisted we use 10k Fibre/SAS drives at least. We're currently on 3
1TB sata disks on my current linux box, and it's fine for me! At least when
it's not rsnapshotting. The workload is 20 user NFS for homes and some
software shares
  * Assuming the pogo sata controller dies, do you suppose I could plug the
disks into any other machine and work with them ? I wonder why the pogo box
does not come with two controllers, doesn't solaris support that !


Thanks a lot for your replies


On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 10:31 AM, MC <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> The good news is that even though the answer to your question is "no", it
> doesn't matter because it sounds like what you are doing is a piece of cake
> :)
>
> Given how cheap hardware is, and how modest your requirements sound, I
> expect you could build multiple custom systems for the cost of an EMC
> system.  Even that pogolinux stuff is overshooting the mark compared to what
> a custom system might be.  Price is typical too, considering they're trying
> to sell 1TB drives for $260 when similar drives are less than $150 for
> regular folks.
>
> The manageability of nexentastor software might be worth it to you over a
> solaris terminal, but for a small shop with one machine and one guy who
> knows it well, you might just do the hardware from scratch :)  Especially
> given what there is to know about ZFS and your use case, such as being able
> to use slower disks with more RAM and a SSD ZIL cache to produce deceptively
> fast results.
>
> If cost continues to be a concern over performance, also consider that
> these pre-made systems are not designed for power conservation at all.
>  They're still shipping old inefficient processors and other such parts in
> these things, hoping to take advantage of IT people who don't care or know
> any better.  A custom system could potentially cut the total power cost in
> half...
>
> > <div id="jive-html-wrapper-div">
> > <div dir="ltr">Hi everyone,<br><br>We&#39;re a small
> > Linux shop (20 users). I am currently using a Linux
> > server to host our 2TBs of data. I am considering
> > better options for our data storage needs. I mostly
> > need instant snapshots and better data protection. I
> > have been considering EMC NS20 filers and Zfs based
> > solutions. For the Zfs solutions, I am considering
> > NexentaStor product installed on a pogoLinux
> > StorageDirector box. The box will be mostly sharing
> > 2TB over NFS, nothing fancy.<br>
> > <br>Now, my question is I need to assess the zfs
> > reliability today Q4-2008 in comparison to an EMC
> > solution. Something like EMC is pretty mature and
> > used at the most demanding sites. Zfs is fairly new,
> > and from time to time I have heard it had some pretty
> > bad bugs. However, the EMC solution is like 4X more
> > expensive. I need to somehow &quot;quantify&quot; the
> > relative quality level, in order to judge whether or
> > not I should be paying all that much to EMC. The only
> > really important reliability measure to me, is not
> > having data loss!<br>
> > Is there any real measure like &quot;percentage of
> > total corruption of a pool&quot; that can assess such
> > a quality, so you&#39;d tell me zfs has pool failure
> > rate of 1 in a 10^6, while EMC has a rate of 1 in a
> > 10^7. If not, would you guys rate such a zfs solution
> > as ??% the reliability of an EMC solution ?<br>
> > <br>I know it&#39;s a pretty difficult question to
> > answer, but it&#39;s the one I need to answer and
> > weigh against the cost. <br>Thanks a million, I
> > really appreciate your help<br></div>
> >
> > </div>_______________________________________________
> > zfs-discuss mailing list
> > zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org
> > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discu
> > ss
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