Zfs vs raid card driver

Creating a raidz storage pool managing zfs file systems. Jun 21, 2018 windows zfs drivers for windows while it is possible to read the data with a compatible hardware raid controller, this isnt always possible, and if the controller card develops a fault. I think most people get such a card only to provide more device ports, and turn off the raid. We love zfs because it can bypass a lot of the issues that might arise when using traditional raid cards. Again, the flexibility of zfs is a real advantage over the hardware raid controller. If a given set of disks is provided to zfs using a hardware raid card, zfs will not be able to efficiently balance its reads and writes between them or rebuild only the data used by any given disk.

Nas set up, hardware raid vs freenas or nas4free thread starter xantonin. Still, the gains from zfs are so freakin attractive though. Many home nas builders consider using zfs for their file system. Zfs trumps normal raid options as far as data integrity but has massive overhead. The virtual device is a tripleparity raid z configuration that consists of nine disks. Youll get wider operating system and driver support, and better performance. The fact that it uses a popular enterprise file system and it is.

To anyone building zfs or linux md raid storage servers. Any lsi or rebrand of it supports this if its an actual raid card and not a plain hba. Well the simple answer is that is needed for zfs or freenas so it handles the raid setup for you ans doesnt act as a raid controller card. Here, id like to go over, from a theoretical standpoint, the performance implication of using raidz. In part 3 of our raid posts well be talking about hardware raid cards, as well as host bus adapters, and finally software raid such as via zfs. With this many drives you would also need to look at spreading them out over multiple raid cards or hbas, as one 24 port card. A vdev is either a raid1 mirror, raid5 raidz or raid6 raidz2. Hardware raid will limit opportunities for zfs to perform self healing on checksum failures. Every hard drive is 4k sectors, nonssd, consumer grade, connected via a pcie x 16 raid card with sas interface system settings. Do you want to give up the cache and computing power of the raid card. If you just want jbod, buy a hba instead of raid card. Cheaper raid cards will utilise the hosts cpu to compute parity via the os driver.

Zfs is journaled, and it is more independent of the hardware. A separate raid card may leave zfs less efficient and reliable. Zfs is also much faster at raid z that windows is at software raid5. Zfs best practices with hardware raid server fault. Jan 16, 2017 zfs on linux vs windows storage spaces with refs. Can i use the jbod option on the raid card, or do i have to buy a normal sas controller for the zfs option.

So you do one large raid and divide everything in the os. The real difference you tested there is zfs vs xfs, and you should absolutely expect to pay some performance cost with zfs. Configure your hardware raid card to serve the drives as 12 x singledisk arrays, this will allow you to keep using all the hardware features of the raid card true jbod mode tends to turn hardware raid cards into dumb sata controllers, disabling most features. Computers gpus graphics cards linux gaming memory motherboards cpus processors software storage operating. Additionally, if youre working with raid configurations more complex than simple mirrors i. This prevents silent data corruption that is usually undetectable by most hardware raid cards. Oct 09, 2012 the best choices seem to be raid 10, perhaps hardwareassisted, or zfs raid zz2. But i have problem deciding that should i use hardware raid raid6 or zfs based raidz2. I usually create a small os raid partition and the rest is data. Imho, im a big fan of kernel developers non directly related to zfs, so i really prefere mdadm to hardware raid. Data integrity is most important, followed by staying withinbudget, followed by high throughput. However, the windows storage spaces has some difference from raid and we cant say that it is inferior to raid.

Why would you sacrifice a pair of 4tb drives in a raid1 config to load the os that will consume what, less than 40gb. The difficulties we have encountered are discussed below. However, virtually 99% of people run zfs for the raid portion of it. Windows zfs drivers for windows while it is possible to read the data with a compatible hardware raid controller, this isnt always possible, and if the controller card develops a fault. The management of stored data generally involves two aspects. Time to finish depends on activity, fillgrade, fragmentation and iops and therefor raid raid z has iops of a single disk so many vdevs ex with mirrors reduce rebuild time as iops scale with number of vdevs, on reads and mirrors 2 x number of vdevs.

I have 32 gb of ram in the server and it uses all of it. Zfs contains cascaded chains of metadata objects that must be followed in order to get to the data. Solved 4tb x 8 drives what raid should i go with for a. Like other posters have said, zfs wants to know a lot about the hardware. Aug 16, 2019 anyone doubting this, go boot up your system and do a megacli adpallinfo a0 command and read that whole output. That is more than the 8gb of ram that is recommended for zfs. A zfs machine might or might not outperform a raid controller.

This way you can easy replace devices if they are hot swappable, manage new pools and so on. Lets see the difference of windows 10 storage spaces vs. Actually, windows 10 storage spaces feature can also realize software raid to some extent. You see some wacky limitations built into the firmware, and youre like why. If your card fails, you need to purchase the exact same makemodel of raid card to get back working again which is unlikely, but still with software raid, you can move the drives. The freebsd drivers for many raid cards range from middlin to pretty. Quetek programmers have developed advanced techniques to recover zfs and raidz data. You could just run your disks in striped mode, but that is a poor use of zfs. They introduce another layer of complexity into the. Hi, i have 12 2tb sata drives as well as 2 perc h700s with 1gig of cache available for a zfs build. For example, with zfs you could create a raid0 using two or more raid. But once you need larger arrays like raid 50, 60 or multiple arrays in a single. The information ive found so far seems outdated, irrelevant to freebsd, too optimistic, or has insufficient detail.

When using zfs the standard raid rules may not apply, especially when lz4. Also i never enable the raid option in the card bios, and i use the sas cables if possible. Redundancy is possible in zfs because it supports three levels of raid z. Some of the older lsi cards with dell firmware are really bad, with queue depths of 25.

But you want to use zfs, at least use it in a proper configuration. The servers used in these tests are quite old and relatively slow. Zfs uses odd to someone familiar with hardware raid terminology like vdevs, zpools, raidz, and so forth. There are many versions of these standard designs around, some are just sata hbas, which would be better for zfs, while others have a raid bios, which isnt so good for zfs. If you are considering raid 5 youll want to lean more heavily towards zfs software raid vs. Flashcrossflash dell h330 raid card to hba33012gbps hba it.

Soft possibly the longest running battle in raid circles is which is faster, hardware raid or software raid. Creating raidz storage pools solaris zfs administration guide. If we wanted to mirror all 20 drives on our zfs system, we could. Flashing lsi hba to it mode or ir mode geeks unlimted inc. Nov 04, 2010 as i am currently fiddling around with oracle solaris and the related technologies, i wanted to see how the zfs file system compares to a hardware raid controller. This gives zfs a greater control to bypass some of the challenges hardware raid cards.

Im in the middle of a big overhaul of my lab having a home office built is awesome, and im getting ready to set up a new storage. Zfs users are most likely very familiar with raidz already, so a comparison with draid would help. Zfs is scalable, and includes extensive protection against data corruption, support for high storage capacities, efficient data compression, integration of the concepts of filesystem and volume management, snapshots and copyonwrite clones, continuous integrity checking and automatic repair, raid z, native. Hardware raid, or software raid, or lvm, or whatever present a drive. A raid card can cost hundreds of dollars for a decent one. The zfs file system allows you to configure different raid levels such as raid. I dont know if they are supported by freenas, but i expect so. I wanted to ask you if youve done any testing with zfs mirrors. We have our top picks for getting fast and reliable freenas hbas host bus adapters for sas and sata, using proven options for freenas and zfs. Installing the lsi sas controller in a desktop part 1. Another bonus of mirrored vdev s in zfs is that you can use multiple mirrors. Which will be good choise hardware raid or zfs based.

It looks like ill need to enable the mrsas driver for this card. However, make sure you install the os with the raid drivers, or youre going to have problems if you switch from ahci to raid. Sep 09, 2012 if you are considering raid 5 youll want to lean more heavily towards zfs software raid vs. For example, with zfs you could create a raid0 using two or more raidz pools. When zfs does raidz or mirroring, a checksum failure on one disk. If your card fails, you need to purchase the exact same makemodel of raid card to get back working again which is unlikely, but still with software raid, you can move the drives to a. Feb 16, 2017 it mode basically makes it in pass through mode so no raid is being used by the controller. Do you really need to buy a hardware raid controllers when using zfs. Its based on the 82576 so it uses the igb driver, which is fine. Nas set up, hardware raid vs freenas or nas4free h. The server i want comes with an adaptec 5805 hardware raid card.

There seems to be an issue somewhere in the layers of zfs. Zfs is the best parity raid implementation on the planet and when we state the horror numbers for raid 5 we do it assuming zfs so that no one can dispute the numbers and if you run anything besides zfs for parity raid the risks actually. If your card fails, you need to purchase the exact same makemodel of raid card to get back working again which is unlikely, but still with software raid, you can move the drives to a new pc. The hidden cost of using zfs for your home nas louwrentius. Im getting increasing worried about what will happen if the perc card. Comparing hardware raid vs software raid deals with how the storage drives in a raid array connect to the motherboard, and the. Raid 0 mdadm was noticeably faster, and i had it across two 50gb partitions from different drives. Beyond the added boot time, there shouldnt be any negative effect. Do you have any thoughts on how performance is effected in scaling up, by increasing number of vdevs in the pool. That way theres zilch chance of a failed card and the hunt for an identical one. Zfs has a selfhealing mechanism which only works if redundancy is performed by zfs. Rivo pcie sata card, 8 port with 8 sata cable, sata controller expansion card with low profile bracket, marvell 9215 non raid, boot as system disk, support 8 sata 3. The performance of your raid is highly dependent on your hardware and os drivers. Sep 25, 2014 as far as i know, zfs on linux doesnt like kernel v4 which is what fedora mainly uses.

As i am currently fiddling around with oracle solaris and the related technologies, i wanted to see how the zfs file system compares to a hardware raid controller. Creating a singleparity raid z pool is identical to creating a mirrored pool, except that the raidz or raidz1 keyword is used instead of mirror. Zfs is used on top of hardware and software raid in most cases, this is. A replace or resilver is a low priority background process that must process all metadata. The illustrations below are simplified, but sufficient for the purpose of a comparison. Flat out, if theres an underlying raid card responsible for providing a single. Jun 27, 2019 the real difference you tested there is zfs vs xfs, and you should absolutely expect to pay some performance cost with zfs. Very large storage box raid660, zfs or something else. Zfs implements raid z, a variation on standard raid 5 that offers better distribution of parity and eliminates the raid 5 write hole in which the data and parity information become inconsistent in case of power loss. Zfs performance vs ram, aio vs barebone, hd vs ssdnvme.

Everything you ever wanted to know about raid part 3 of 4. Flashcrossflash dell h330 raid card to hba33012gbps hba. Zfs does not support growing the array by 12 drives at a time. Nov 18, 2018 re the op, the cards are probably using one of the marvel sataraid chipsets. Zfs has two tools zpool and zfs to manage devices, raid, pools and filesystems from the operating system level. Windows zfs drivers for windows while it is possible to read the data with a compatible hardware raid. Im using a poweredge r510 and a h700 raid card with 512 megs of cache. What ifi run freenas and zfs on top of that hardware raid card.

Dell poweredge 2900, 24g mem, 10x2t sata2 disk, intel raid controller. When we evaluated zfs for our storage needs, the immediate question became what are these storage levels, and what do they do for us. The zfs file system allows you to configure different raid levels such as raid 0, 1, 10, 5, 6. Raid z is a superset implementation of the traditional raid 5 but with a different twist. The raid z manager from akitio provides a graphical user interface gui for the openzfs software, making it easier to create and manage a raid set based on the zfs file system. Nov 17, 2010 raidz performed slightly better there. The illustrations below are simplified, but sufficient for the. We want to just use a gigabit or 10gigabit interconnect without any special internal pcie card. That brings me back to my guess about it mode vs raid jbod mode on your card. We would waste an inordinate amount of space, but we could sustain 19 drive failures. While zfs will likely be more reliable than other filesystems on hardware raid, it will not be as reliable as it would be on its own. Lowend hardware raid vs software raid server fault. For zfs, you do not need a heavy raid engine since parity is managed in software running on cpus. Configure your hardware raid card to serve the drives as 12 x singledisk arrays, this will allow you to keep using all the hardware features of the raid card true jbod mode tends to turn hardware raid cards.

Once again i take no responsibility in the unlikely event you incorrectly flash your card. The following example shows how to create a pool with a single raid z device that consists of five disks. Im read various posts on the web about the perc controllers. Today the rest of those results are available with using five disks and testing btrfs on this newest version of the linux kernel while testing the raid 0, 1, 5, 6, and 10 levels. These are simply suns words for a form of raid that is pretty. Im talking about using the raid controller on the perc card to perform the parity calculations versus using the perc card simply as a passthrough sata controller and having zfs ie. Written by michael larabel in storage on 14 december 2018. Instead of using fixed stripe width like raid 4 or raid dp, raid zz2 uses a dynamic variable stripe width. Zfs raidz performance, capacity and integrity comparison. Im building a freebsd fileserver with zfs and was going over the different pool options and it looks like mirror is faster, has better. This card comes by default with ibms version of the lsi raid. For example, instead of a hardware raid card getting the first crack at your drives, zfs uses a jbod card that takes the drives and processes them with its builtin volume manager and file system. Top picks for freenas hbas host bus adapters freenas is a freebsd based storage platform that utilizes zfs.

Whether or not a system that effectively requires you make use of the raid card precludes the use of zfs has more to do with the other benefits of zfs than it does data resiliency. For raid, youll get a separate ui on boot and it will slow down the boot speed of your system, usually quite significantly. So how hard is it to crash and kill a freenas 11 zfs raid. You can perform the following operations on zfs raid. Before raid was raid, software disk mirroring raid. When to and not to use raidz raidz is the technology used by zfs to implement a dataprotection scheme which is less costly than mirroring in terms of block overhead. The functions, features, security, reliability and compatibility depends completely on openzfs and the application only works if the zfs. Creating a raidz storage pool managing zfs file systems in. I always group the disks in the same vdev in the same raid card. Jul 22, 2017 raid levels supported as discussed, most midrange cards can handle typical raid like raid 0, 1, 5, 6 and 10. I want a two drive fail recovery, raid 6 or what ever freenas uses for that. One of the most popular server raid controller chip and hba controller chip out there is the lsi sas 2008. Os automatically loads the mpt2sas driver which is included in the kernel. The fact that it uses a popular enterprise file system and it is free means that it is extremely popular among it professionals who are on constrained budgets.

Aug 15, 2006 over at home opensolaris forums zfs discuss robert milkowski has posted some promising test results hard vs. Zfs is a combined file system and logical volume manager designed by sun microsystems. Flat out, if theres an underlying raid card responsible for providing a single lun to zfs, zfs is not going to improve data resiliency. I thought that if i threw in a mirror of the same it would be like raid 10 on zfs plus i could replace a drive, etc and all the good things. Also i have to rely on the raid card to build the raid array. Hardware raid controllers should not be used with zfs. So if the computer goes wrong, i can move the zfs array to a different server. Sep 03, 2015 7 responses to freebsd hardware raid vs. I wouldnt expect the difference to be quite that wide, by the way. May 29, 2015 earlier this month i posted some btrfs raid 01 benchmarks on linux 4. Personally id suggest zfs over a raid card for any home setup. I have been running several tests using an assortment of sans digital esata jbod boxes and several raid cards and have come up with measurements that some people might find useful. For an example of how to configure zfs with a raid z storage pool, see example 2, configuring a raid z zfs file system.