SolarisZfs

ZFS is an intelligent filesystem with in-built virtual disk management and data protection.

ZFS can manage a variety of storage resources (whole disks, partitions, files). Unlike traditional approaches where each filesystem is a static allocation of physical storage, ZFS filesystem storage is allocated as it is used. ZFS manages usage quotas as filesystem size limit. Thus ZFS favours the creation of many individual filesystems.

Configuration

The configuration employed here, limits the number of disks in each storage pool so that, in the event of x4500 hardware failure, it remains feasible to install each storage pool into alternate hardware.

The disks are grouped into raid sets for protection from disk failure. For maximum performance, each raid set is made of one disk from each of the 6 disk controllers. Raidz2 provides protection from two simultaneous disk failures. Each raid set has access to a hot spare to automatically rebuild after a disk failure.

The storage pools are configured using two raid sets. This is a balance between total number of disks in the pool (for alternate installation) and fragmentation of storage allocation.