Software raid can never be faster it is at best as fast for stupid raid types, like striping than hardware raid unless those who implemented the hardware raid were a bunch of rabid chimps on acid. However, it is designed to overcome the raid5 write hole error, in which the data and parity information become inconsistent after an unexpected restart. The resource hogging features like data deduplication are turned off by default causing no noticeable difference. In this post, i want to test the raid 10 performance. However, there is no hardware controller implementing raidz. Freebsds gmirror and zfs are great, but up until now its been a gut feeling combined with anecdotal evidence. Oct 10, 2008 zfs equally as mobile between solaris, opensolaris, freebsd, osx, and linux under fuse. Zfs has a selfhealing mechanism which only works if redundancy is performed by zfs. I also couldnt find complete information regarding how to create and manage the raid. On your quest for data integrity using openzfs is unavoidable.
The mount options used were the defaults as were other settings kept at their os vendor defaults. Hi all, what is the recommendation for using zfs with hardware raid storage. 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. 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. The idea with zfs is to let it known as much as possible how the disks are behaving. But ive heard about btrfs and it seems btrfs is also able to handle software raid 5 like zfs. Imho, im a big fan of kernel developers non directly related to zfs, so i really prefere mdadm to hardware raid. Software vs hardware raid nixcraft nixcraft linux tips.
Jun, 2016 comparing hardware raid vs software raid setups deals with how the storage drives in a raid array connect to the motherboard in a server or pc, and the management of those drives. On the software side, todays software raid is superfast at least with linux and bsd, extremely. Stephen feller zfs is the filesystem sun microsystems began shipping in november with its operating systems to provide data management and protection from the loss of data due to file corruption. Hardware raid will cost more, but it will also be free of software raids. While zfs can work with hardware raid devices, zfs will usually work more efficiently and with greater protection of data, if it has raw access to all storage devices, and disks are not connected to the system using a hardware, firmware or other soft raid, or any other controller which modifies the.
Zfs can be fast but you would better have plenty of ram available 2 gb. But the real question is whether you should use a hardware raid solution or a software raid solution. After five years of development and testing, sun says zfs and the new data replication model it includes, raidz, can eliminate the need. Mar 14, 2019 difference between software raid and hardware raid in high level is presented in this video session. Before raid was raid, software disk mirroring raid 1 was a huge profit generator for system vendors, who sold it as an addon to their operating systems. Ive read a lot about zfs raid z and its exactly what i want to do. Sep 28, 2016 how to install and use zfs on ubuntu and why youd want to. Since zfs is the most advanced system in that respect, zfs on linux was tested for that purpose and proved to be a good choice here too. Redundancy is possible in zfs because it supports three levels of raidz.
Hardware raid controllers should not be used with zfs. In fact, it would be quite unfortunate if you are using anything but zfs for storing your valuable data. This way you can easy replace devices if they are hot swappable, manage new pools and so on. Zfs supports a raid level equivalent to raid5, called raidz, and raid6 is called raidz2. Thisd then be set up as a network share for a remote jirabitbucket store, and also vm storage for my xen boxes. Native zfs on linux produced at lawrence livermore national laboratory spl zfs disclaimer zfs disclaimer. If zfs was unsafe on hardware raid, this would mean that zfs was.
A hardware raid controller configured for two raid 0s. However, a lot of people are reluctant to try it out. 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. It is also migratable between zfs implementations, e. Linux raid is different from windows for sound technical and. Copyonwrite is not universally efficient for some particular load patterns e. This essentially a jbod configuration no raid performed by the card, and in this case should perform about the same as the motherboard ports. Hardware raid does have a place under certain oss, but im going to tell you why. Aug 15, 2006 over at home opensolaris forums zfs discuss robert milkowski has posted some promising test results hard vs. Zfs can handle raid without requiring any extra software or hardware. A hardware raid controller configured for raid 1, presenting a single volume to the os, with zfs only seeing it as a single disk. Apr 05, 2019 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. A raid can be deployed using both software and hardware.
If you are using zfs with all the default values set, then it will use more resources than xfs and perform slightly worse in terms of io but, with modern hardware and faster cpus, this difference is negligible. So using zfs is the better option, its up to you and your particular needs and circumstances to decide if using zfs is worth it for you. How does it compare to hardware raid for performance. Theres hardware raid and then theres hardware raid. May 14, 2014 zfs would be better compared to md linux software raid lvm xfs or to smartarray hp hardware raid lvm xfs than to xfs alone. Mar 22, 2016 due to the need of upgrading our storage space and the fact that we have in our machines 2 raid controllers, one for the internal disks and one for the external disks, the possibility to use a software raid instead of a traditional hardware based raid was tested. Zfs implements raidz, a variation on standard raid5 that offers better distribution of parity and eliminates the raid5 write hole in which the data and parity information become inconsistent in case of power loss. Hardware raid will cost more, but it will also be free of software raid s. I would definitely check the bios and disable the optane cache. Zfs linux benchmarks will come when the upcoming zol 0. Dec 14, 2018 ext4 using linux software raid was benchmarked as well on a single disk, raid10, and raid0 across the twenty samsung 860 evo ssds. The zfs file system allows you to configure different raid levels such as raid 0, 1, 10, 5, 6. I have seen comments regarding zfs and hardware raid both on the zfs faq and the zfs best practices guide. Over at home opensolaris forums zfs discuss robert milkowski has posted some promising test results hard vs.
As i had nothing to loose, i scrapped that setup and went back to my original hardware plan and remounted etc and was then seeing 95105mbs at the file system seeing about 510% cpu usage during readwrite. I was initially considering a zfs software raid but after reading the minimum requirements it does not sound like zfs will be. This gives zfs a greater control to bypass some of the challenges hardware raid cards usually have. I know that zfs requires a lot of ram andor an ssd cache to compliment it. Mar 19, 2015 this video is the first in the storage series for managing storage in the enterprise. Zfs is also much faster at raid z that windows is at software raid5. Unsurprisingly, zfs has its own implementation of raid. With years of building and testing servers in various configurations we have always suspected hardware raid was not all that its cracked up to be. Linux software raid mdadm vs zfs zraid for file server server. Where that processing occurs can be important depending on the complexity of your raid setup. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. On native platforms not linux solaris is faster that ntfs. Jul 07, 2009 a redundant array of inexpensive disks raid allows high levels of storage reliability.
How good is a zfs raid 50s performance in comparison with. Zfs uses odd to someone familiar with hardware raid terminology like vdevs, zpools, raidz, and so forth. I run zfs as my nas system on an ubuntu linux system with nfs and samba exports. 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. When zfs does raid z or mirroring, a checksum failure on one disk can be corrected by treating the disk containing the sector as bad for the purpose of reconstructing the original information.
My concern is protecting against silent corruption, so that seems to leave me either btrfs and zfs. Otherwise it appears that zfs is full of features that xfs lacks but, in reality, it is only a semantic victory. Zfs best practices with hardware raid server fault. Zfs allows dynamic resizing growth of pools when the host is running. Apr 14, 2015 once freenas was installed and setup with the software raid zfs setup, i was seeing again 5060mbs file system. These are simply suns words for a form of raid that is pretty.
Sep 25, 2014 its more like running zfs on a hardware raid, which is redundant. This first video we talk about raid, and the current state of the art f. Hardware raid will limit opportunities for zfs to perform self healing on checksum failures. Jul 21, 2010 a new raid variant would have the iops of raid 5, and an even greater dynamism in the stripe layout than raid z. Zfs has two tools zpool and zfs to manage devices, raid, pools and filesystems from the operating system level. I moved a pool from freebsd to linux without a problem. Do you really need to configure host based zfs mirror or zfs raidz devices on top of the hardware raid storage. In a hardware raid setup, the drives connect to a special raid controller inserted in a fast pciexpress pcie slot in a motherboard. Windows software raid vs hardware raid ars technica. Hardware raid handles its arrays independently from the host and it still presents the host with. Why use an extra dedicated processor when your fileservers have very powerful processors already in them. The bottom line is that zfs is likely to perform better than these tests reveal under real world situations. Usage will be for at home and will be mostly for streaming, backups. This video is the first in the storage series for managing storage in the enterprise.
I was initially considering a zfs software raid but after reading the minimum requirements it does not sound like zfs will be able to saturate a gigabit line with an amd. This allows it to do fancy things like allocate files intelligently across stripes, rebuild a disk with only the data used by the file system huge time saver, and be able to repair files onthefly that are. It is used to improve disk io performance and reliability of your server or workstation. Whether software raid vs hardware raid is the one for you depends on what you need to do and how much you want to pay. Dec 10, 2018 ive gone completely away from hardware raid. Zfs is clearly technically the better option, but those legacy options are not so bad that you are taking unreasonable risks with your data. Soft possibly the longest running battle in raid circles is which is faster, hardware raid or software raid. My main tests are mainly based on freebsd and centos linux kernel v3. How to install and use zfs on ubuntu and why youd want to. The more interesting option is to use some of my old hardware lying around to put together a storage machine either using a hardware raid controller or sata controller using zfs for raid 10 or whatever the zfs equivalent is. Portability of arrays between linux machines without reconstruction. As far as i know, zfs on linux doesnt like kernel v4 which is what fedora mainly uses. We list the pros and cons of hardware vs software raid to help you decide which one is best for you.