Re: [9fans] file server speed

[Steven Stallion <sstallion@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 7:04 PM,  <kokamoto@hera.eonet.ne.jp> wrote:
>> not a fair comparsion.
>
> Yes, I'd have been more specific.
> my intension was cwfs > fossil+venti of 9atom >> fossil+venti labs.
> I did not consider kenfs itself, because I consider it should be
> file+auth+cpu server.   The last is not important, but for drawterm
> from others.
>
> Recent kenfs can be such a machine?
> Please remember I plan it for my private home machine, not
> any sofisticated office use.

kenfs works well, but you have to be well prepared to maintain it.
Invest in a decent UPS - preferably one that is supported by the
auto-shutdown (ISTR support was added for that a while back). You need
to be careful when sizing your cache - I would invest in a pair of
decent SSDs for cache, and two or more drives for housing the WORM. Be
prepared for failure. The last large kensfs I maintained (around 16TB
usable, 48TB raw) worked very well but would still crash one every
year or two. Make sure you keep hard copies of your fsconfig and get
comfortable with scripting as erik mentioned.

That was in an office environment. At home I use
fossil+(plan9port)venti running on linux-based NAS. This ends up
working very well for me since I have resources to spare on that
machine. This also lets me backup my arenas via CrashPlan. I use a
cheap SSD for fossil in my file server and a small SATA DOM for
booting (the idea is I can throw away the SSD at any time and still
recover). Speed has been on par with kenfs, but it takes a little work
to get there.

I hope this is useful to you - maintaining an fs shouldn't be taken on
lightly, but it is one of the best ways to understand what it means to
maintain a plan9 installation.

Cheers,

Steve