[GTALUG] Which Distro is Best for Running a ZFS-on-Linux Fileserver.

[Amos H. Weatherill]

Hello All,

Thank you for your Feedback and Discussion.

FreeBSD is a good suggestion but I don't want to wander away from what I know and as Scott pointed out, this is a Linux User Group ...

Also, once I get More RAM, I will want to Consolidate Services running on other machines on to the NAS.

Currently, I have 8 GB of RAM, which my reading says should be enough to support a 4 TB ZFS Pool and the Necessary Samba configuration.

At the moment, my Network copy speed appears to be limited to about 25 MB/s but I suspect that this is because my Shares are on a Windows Machine with a PCI SATA Card.

So, if the NAS can do better, I'll declare Victory ...

Scott,

My reasoning for / on ZFS is pretty Simple ... the machine that is becoming my first NAS only has 4 SATA Ports, so I can't afford to Waste one on a boot drive.

For Distro, I think I'll go with Fedora, as long as the / on ZFS guide is sufficiently detailed.

Thank You All,
Amos

Sent from my android device.

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Sullivan via talk <talk at gtalug.org>
To: talk at gtalug.org
Sent: Tue, 28 Aug 2018 5:19 PM
Subject: Re: [GTALUG] Which Distro is Best for Running a ZFS-on-Linux Fileserver.

Having read through the thread to date, I'm actually a little 
disappointed at the number of linux users pushing towards a Solaris or 
BSD for ZFS.

My primary File servers (4 of them) are all using ZFS for their data 
partitions.


Amos,

## Couple of Answers to your questions

A) Disto?

I regularly run ZFS on CentOS and Fedora on a mix of SSDs and HDDs of 
both the internal and external varieties. Fedora has some caveats, only 
in that sometimes the kernel releases get ahead of what the ZFS on linux 
team will support. And it's just a matter of waiting on a working kernel 
zfs combination a week or two for them to catch up.

But frankly, just pick your favorite distro and follow the relevant 
getting started guide.

https://zfsonlinux.org/


B)  Distro with ZFS root support (at install time)?

No distro install supports this yet as I've seen. Although the do it 
yourself ubuntu guide is lengthy, but very well detailed.

https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/wiki/Ubuntu-18.04-Root-on-ZFS

Arch also support ZFS root, but their installation is all largely manual 
to begin with.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installing_Arch_Linux_on_ZFS


## Couple of my own Questions

1) Why root (/) on ZFS, what is your use case / risk your trying to 
mitigate?


On 2018-08-24 02:26 PM, right.maple.nut via talk wrote:
> 
> Hello All,
> 
> Like the Subject Line says, I'm setting up a ZFS File Server for my Home 
> Network.
> 
> Given that I will have to go to the trouble of setting up the Distro and 
> Migrating the Linux Install to ZFS Root, I don't want to have to do this 
> too many times.
> 
> So, which Distro are the favourite for Running ZFS-on-Linux?
> 
> Also, is there such a thing as a Linux Distro that is smart enough to 
> give you a choice if you are willing to use non-GPL'ed code in the 
> Installer, so that I can just Install Directly on a ZFS Pool?
> 
> Thank You in Advance for your Input.
> 
> Regards,
> Amos
> 
> 
> 
> ---
> Talk Mailing List
> talk at gtalug.org
> https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
> 


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Scott Sullivan
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