ZFS on a "low performance" Soekris net5501?

kaarposoft

kaarposoft

Dear all,

I am installing FreeBSD 8 on a Soekris net5501 device.
This is a "low performance" box with a 500 Mhz AMD Geode LX and 512Mb RAM.
It is supposed to work as a simple home/small business server with kerberos/ldap/nfs/samba.

The box is shut down by simply removing power (on software shutdown, ACPI etc).
So, the disks are likely to be corrupted.
Indeed after 5 or 10 power-off/power-on cycles, the UFS2 filesystems where damaged beyond repair.

So, my question is: Does it make sense to install ZFS on such a "low performance" box?
And if yes, any particular tunables I should watch out for?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions on this.

/Henrik
 
i386 arch and 512mb ram is a guaranteed recipe for disaster. Let put it this way (and generalize a bit):

i386 with 1gb ram or less = unworkable
i386 with 2-4gb of ram = requires heavy tweaking for stability
amd64 with 1-2gb ram = might require minor tweaking
amd64 with 4gb ram ore more = will (with very rare exceptions) run great without any tweaking at all

In your particular case, I would look into implementing the use of GJournal on your system.
 
Jago's advice makes sense, but is specific to running ZFS, although it doesn't say so. [My own server does in fact run nicely on an i386 with 512MB of RAM.]

Another approach worth mentioning might be getting a UPS smart enough to shut down the server properly before removing power. The end users wouldn't have to change their habits, and the filesystems wouldn't be getting such abuse.
 
Hi Lowell and Jago,

Thank you for your answers!

I guess ZFS is out of the question in my case ))-:

/Henrik
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top