SSD for system install

G

gregober

Hello,

I have just acquired an Intel R2312GZ4GC4 which I have equipped with a Adaptec RAID 51245 and 6 WD red disks of 3To - It'll come with 32Gb of Kingston ECC RAM - ZFS on root.

I am planing to use It as a backup device on a second hosting facility to backup couple of critical servers we have.


Item: Intel(R) Server System R2312GZ4GC4
Intel(R) Server System: integrated in a 2U chassis supporting
12x3.5* Hot-swap drives, 24 DIMMs, 2 750W Redundant Power
Supplies, enterprise class IO, Intel(R) Remote Management
Module 4 (AXXRMM4R) Integrated Intel(R) Server System with (1)
Intel(R) Server Board S2600GZ4 in 2U chassis, (1) airduct, (1)
Control panel on rack handle, Support for 2x SSD mounting on
airduct, (12) 3.5” Hot Swap Drive Carriers with (1) Hot Swap
Backplane, (3) SFF8087 to SFF8087 cables, (2) CPU heatsinks,
Redundant and hotswap cooling fans, (2) risers with 3 x8 slots
(2xFHFL 1xFHHL), (2) 750W AC Power Supply, Intel(R) Remote
Management Module 4, (1 Set) Value rails
Qty: 1



I will use ZFS as file system for both the root drive (SSD ?) - and the Adaptec RAID / JBOD controller (RAIDZ2 probably).

I wanted to know what were your experiences on choosing an SSD HD as main system device / root FS ?

Do you think I should go for a redundant SSD drives (RAID 1) or does this offers limited interest in such config ?


I have been reading comments about "failure" / problems here and there, but comments are not so fresh (one year is very old in SSD). Should I go for the "top of the line" Intel 710 or have you been experiencing with cheaper and efficient solutions ?

Any relevant infos on the subject will be welcome.

So I wanted to have fresh infos and updates on your experiences with SSD on such mid size system.


Thx.
 
On my experience SSD is very much improves system boot time and interactivity. But few years ago I had wore out consumer-level OCZ SSD in my development laptop up to the point where it had to shrink for few megs to keep required internal redundancy. In such situation two mirrored SSDs should wear out during the same time. Enterprise-level SSD probably could be an option if long time reliability under active write load is needed.
 
@gregober

I think that using the SSD´s just as system drives would be such a waste. Instead use them where they matter; ZIL and L2ARC. You can configure the server to boot from the one, big pool instead. That way, you can have 6 drives that the system can use to boot on (instead of just two) while still having all the snappiness and response that the SSD´s can offer. As for the argument that they would improve boot time, yeah sure. But the most time consuming part for a server is BIOS and controller, not booting the OS. So it could look something like:
Code: 
rpool
  raidz2-0
    gpt/disk0
    gpt/disk1
    gpt/disk2
    gpt/disk3
    gpt/disk4
    gpt/disk5
    gpt/disk6
  logs
    gpt/log0
  cache
    gpt/cache0

And filesystem structure should be set up along the lines of:
Code: 
rpool	
rpool/ROOT
rpool/ROOT/default
rpool/ROOT/default/usr
rpool/ROOT/default/usr/local
rpool/ROOT/default/usr/obj
rpool/ROOT/default/usr/src
rpool/ROOT/default/var
rpool/DATA
rpool/DATA/home
rpool/DATA/home/joe
rpool/SWAP

To make it compatible with FreeBSD´s newfound support for Boot Environments. For more info, see: http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=31662

Just don´t forget to use proper 4k alignment and ashift when creating the pool, since it´s impossible to correct that afterwards. Performance will be stellar.

As for which SSD you should buy, my money would be on either OCZ Vertex 4 256GB MLC or Samsung 840 256GB MLC. I haven´t tested either of them, but I´ve tested enough to know that they would be great:) https://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=23566

/Sebulon
 
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