Thanks Scott, I was really itchy to order one, now I just want to save that open $ for Remy+++.
Then, next question, can I trust any HD for my home laptop? should I go get a Sony VAIO or a cheap China-made thing would do? big price delta... z at home ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott Laird" <sc...@sigkill.org> To: "JZ" <j...@excelsioritsolutions.com> Cc: "Toby Thain" <t...@telegraphics.com.au>; "Brandon High" <bh...@freaks.com>; <zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <peter.k...@sun.com>; "Orvar Korvar" <knatte_fnatte_tja...@yahoo.com> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 5:36 PM Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? > Today? Low-power SSDs are probably less reliable than low-power hard > drives, although they're too new to really know for certain. Given > the number of problems that vendors have had getting acceptable write > speeds, I'd be really amazed if they've done any real work on > long-term reliability yet. Going forward, SSDs will almost certainly > be more reliable, as long as you have something SMART-ish watching the > number of worn-out SSD cells and recommending preemptive replacement > of worn-out drives every few years. That should be a slow, > predictable process, unlike most HD failures. > > > Scott > > On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 2:30 PM, JZ <j...@excelsioritsolutions.com> wrote: >> I was think about Apple's new SSD drive option on laptops... >> >> is that safer than Apple's HD or less safe? [maybe Orvar can help me on >> this] >> >> the price is a bit hefty for me to just order for experiment... >> Thanks! >> z at home >> >> >> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Toby Thain" >> <t...@telegraphics.com.au> >> To: "JZ" <j...@excelsioritsolutions.com> >> Cc: "Scott Laird" <sc...@sigkill.org>; "Brandon High" <bh...@freaks.com>; >> <zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <peter.k...@sun.com> >> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 5:25 PM >> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? >> >> >>> >>> On 7-Jan-09, at 9:43 PM, JZ wrote: >>> >>>> ok, Scott, that sounded sincere. I am not going to do the pic thing on >>>> you. >>>> >>>> But do I have to spell this out to you -- somethings are invented not >>>> for >>>> home use? >>>> >>>> Cindy, would you want to do ZFS at home, >>> >>> Why would you disrespect your personal data? ZFS is perfect for home >>> use, >>> for reasons that have been discussed on this list and elsewhere. >>> >>> Apple also recognises this, which is why ZFS is in OS X 10.5 and will >>> presumably become the default boot filesystem. >>> >>> Sorry to wander a little offtopic, but IMHO - Apple needs to >>> acknowledge, >>> and tell their customers, that hard drives are unreliable consumables. >>> >>> I am desperately looking forward to the day when they recognise the >>> need >>> to ship all their systems with: >>> 1) mirrored storage out of the box; >>> 2) easy user-swappable drives; >>> 3) foolproof fault notification and rectification. >>> >>> There is no reason why an Apple customer should not have this level of >>> protection for her photo and video library, Great American Novel, or >>> whatever. Time Machine is a good first step (though it doesn't often >>> work >>> smoothly for me with a LaCie external FW drive). >>> >>> These are the neglected pieces, IMHO, of their touted Digital Lifestyle. >>> >>> --Toby >>> >>> >>>> or just having some wine and music? >>>> >>>> Can we focus on commercial usage? >>>> please! >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> ----- Original Message ----- >>>> From: "Scott Laird" <sc...@sigkill.org> >>>> To: "Brandon High" <bh...@freaks.com> >>>> Cc: <zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <peter.k...@sun.com> >>>> Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 9:28 PM >>>> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? >>>> >>>> >>>>> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 4:53 PM, Brandon High <bh...@freaks.com> >>>>> wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 7:45 AM, Joel Buckley <joel.buck...@sun.com> >>>>>> wrote: >>>>>>> >>>>>>> How much is your time worth? >>>>>> >>>>>> Quite a bit. >>>>>> >>>>>>> Consider the engineering effort going into every Sun Server. >>>>>>> Any system from Sun is more than sufficient for a home server. >>>>>>> You want more disks, then buy one with more slots. Done. >>>>>> >>>>>> A few years ago, I put together the NAS box currently in use at home >>>>>> for $300 for 1TB of space. Mind you, I recycled the RAM from another >>>>>> box and the four 250GB disks were free. I think 250 drives were >>>>>> around >>>>>> $200 at the time, so let's say the system price was $1200. >>>>>> >>>>>> I don't think there's a Sun server that takes 4+ drives anywhere >>>>>> near >>>>>> $1200. The X4200 uses 2.5" drives, but costs $4255. Actually adding >>>>>> more drives ups the cost further. That means the afternoon I spent >>>>>> setting my server up was worth $3000. I should tell my boss that. >>>>>> >>>>>> A more reasonable comparison would be the Ultra 24. A system with >>>>>> 4x250 drives is $1650. I could build a 4 TB system today for *less* >>>>>> than my 1TB system of 2 years ago, so let's use 3x750 + 1x250 >>>>>> drives. >>>>>> (That's all the store will let me) and the price jumps to $2641. >>>>>> >>>>>> Assume that I buy the cheapest x64 system (the X2100 M2 at $1228) >>>>>> and >>>>>> add a drive tray because I want 4 drives ... well I can't. The >>>>>> cheapest drive tray is $7465. >>>>>> >>>>>> I have trouble justifying Sun hardware for many business >>>>>> applications >>>>>> that don't require SPARC, let alone for the home. For custom systems >>>>>> that most tinkerers would want at home, a shop like Silicon >>>>>> Mechanics >>>>>> (http://www.siliconmechanics.com/) (or even Dell or HP) is almost >>>>>> always a better deal on hardware. >>>>> >>>>> I agree completely. About a year ago I spent around $800 (w/o >>>>> drives) >>>>> on a NAS box for home. I used a 4x PCI-X single-Xeon Supermicro MB, >>>>> a >>>>> giant case, and a single 8-port Supermicro SATA card. Then I dropped >>>>> a pair of 80 GB boot drives and 9x 500 GB drives into it. With >>>>> raidz2 >>>>> plus a spare, that gives me around 2.7T of usable space. When I >>>>> filled that up a few weeks back, I bought 2 more 8-port SATA cards, 2 >>>>> Supermicro CSE-M35T-1B 5-drive hot-swap bays, and 9 1.5T drives, all >>>>> for under $2k. That's around $0.25/GB for the expansion and $0.36 >>>>> overall, including last year's expensive 500G drives. >>>>> >>>>> The closest that I can come to this config using current Sun hardware >>>>> is probably the X4540 w/ 500G drives; that's $35k for 14T of usable >>>>> disk (5x 8-way raidz2 + 1 spare + 2 boot disks), $2.48/GB. It's much >>>>> nicer hardware but I don't care. I'd also need an electrician (for >>>>> 2x >>>>> 240V circuits), a dedicated server room in my house (for the fan >>>>> noise), and probably a divorce lawyer :-). >>>>> >>>>> Sun's hardware really isn't price-competitive on the low end, >>>>> especially when commercial support offerings have no value to you. >>>>> There's nothing really wrong with this, as long as you understand >>>>> that >>>>> Sun's really only going to be selling into shops where Sun's support >>>>> and extra engineering makes financial sense. In Sun's defense, this >>>>> is kind of an odd system, specially built for unusual requirements. >>>>> >>>>> My NAS box works well enough for me. It's probably eaten ~20 hours >>>>> of >>>>> my time over the past year, partially because my Solaris is really >>>>> rusty and partially because pkg has left me with broken, unbootable >>>>> systems twice :-(. It's hard to see how better hardware would have >>>>> helped with that, though. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Scott >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> zfs-discuss mailing list >>>>> zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org >>>>> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> zfs-discuss mailing list >>>> zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org >>>> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >>> >> >> _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
