[TriLUG] SSD-based NFS servers for production - ready for primetime?

[Ron Kelley]

Thanks Michael.  

Are there any good/solid open-source ZFS-based NFS servers distributions you have used?

Thanks,

-----------------------------
Ron Kelley
rkelleyrtp at gmail.com

On Jan 15, 2012, at 2:56 PM, Michael Rothwell wrote:

> Although it is not really available for Linux, a ZFS-based NFS server may
> be a good option for you. You can add SSDs as L2ARC cache and log devices
> on top of spinning disks. The system will use the SSDs for increased
> read/write performance, but will not crash if/when the SSDs die; it will
> just stop using them and fall back to disks (and system memory) only.
> 
> -M
> On Jan 15, 2012 1:08 PM, "Ron Kelley" <rkelleyrtp at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Greetings all,
>> 
>> I need to add some NFS horsepower to our production network and find
>> myself at a crossroads.  Our current NFS servers each have 8x Seagate 1TB
>> 7200-RPM SATA drives hooked to Areca ARC1220 controllers.  They have been
>> very stable/reliable over the past few years but the drives are starting to
>> die off (3-4yrs @ 24/7 operation).  In addition, we have added more NFS
>> clients to the mix (combination of ESX servers and CentOS clients) which
>> has pushed the NFS servers to the point of I/O starvation.
>> 
>> I have been scouring the 'net looking for information about spinning
>> drives vs SSDs in an enterprise NFS deployment.  After a ton of research, I
>> am torn between the 10K-RPM/15KRPM 2.5" Seagate drives and the Intel 510
>> SSDs.  The SSDs would certainly fix the performance issue, but I am
>> concerned they won't last as long especially given the large number of
>> writes our NFS servers perform.  I know the 510s are not "enterprise grade"
>> SSDs, but Anandtech and Tom's hardware has some very glowing reviews for
>> them.  Here is a good link to a Tom's article from July 2011 about SSD
>> reliability:
>> http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-reliability-failure-rate,2923.html
>> 
>> As for the configuration, I will put them in a 6-drive RAID-5 array using
>> Linux software RAID.  If a drive fails, we can easily swap it out with
>> another spare on the shelf.  And, as for space, we need about 1.5T of
>> usable NFS space to store VMDKs and other high-sensitive items.
>> 
>> Does anyone have an opinion or real-life experience as to the reliability
>> of SSD drives in an enterprise setting?
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> 
>> -----------------------------
>> Ron Kelley
>> rkelleyrtp at gmail.com
>> 
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