Test: Zfs «l2arc» with Intel SSD

Simple test to validate that my new SSD was not a waste of money. The test was made from a Windows xp virtual machine with iometer to generate I/O to a CIFS share on my file server “Solaris 11 Express”.

test	Test details	Test file size	L2arc SSD «in»	Average response time ms	iops	Explanation
1	Random 4k read	3GB	No	0.4	9517	3Gb fit in ram «arc»
2	Random 4k read	30GB	No	33.8	118	No ssd cache and 30GB is to big to fit in arc.. so I hit arc and the disk
3	Random 4k read	30GB	Yes	9.7	411	«l2arc» is configure and can contain 30GB but have to «warm»
4	Random 4k read	30GB	Yes	2.7	1482	Same as 3 but l2arc is warm
5	Random 4k read (more workers)	30GB	Yes	2.5	1625	Same as 4 but with more iometer workers

Test1

Test2

Test3

Test4

zpool iostat -v data

Test5

Another interesting post on the subject: http://blogs.sun.com/brendan/entry/test

Monitoring zpool with email alert «Solaris 11 Express»

Crontab job to scrub zpool once a week and check zpool status

45 3 * * 0 /usr/sbin/zpool scrub MydataZpool 45 3 * * 1 /usr/sbin/zpool scrub rpool 15 8 * * * /pathToperlScript/Zpool_check

Perl script to send email alert when zpool is not healthy

«Zpool_check»

#!/usr/bin/perl my $command_output = `zpool status -x`; if ($command_output eq "all pools are healthy\n") { print "all pools are healthy"; exit; } else { print "zpool not healthy"; $to='MYEMAIL@MYPROVIDER.com'; $from= 'alert@MYDOMAIN.COM'; $subject='zfs alert'; open(MAIL, "/usr/sbin/sendmail -t"); ## Mail Header print MAIL "To: $to\n"; print MAIL "From: $from\n"; print MAIL "Subject: $subject\n\n"; ## Mail Body print MAIL "Zfs alert \n"; print MAIL $command_output; close(MAIL); }

Configure sendmail if not already done...

Add this line to “/etc/mail/cf/cf/sendmail.mc”

DOMAIN(`solaris-generic')dnl define(`SMART_HOST', `SMTP.MYPROVIDER.com') define(`confFALLBACK_SMARTHOST', `mailhost$?m.$m$.')dnl

ZFS file server with Solaris 11

Why I choose zfs filesystem for my home file server

• Functionality (deduplication, encryption, compression, snapshot, replication, clone, iscsi target builtin, etc)
• Block level checksum (say goodbye to silent data corruption)
• Report read error and corrects it if you have a mirror or parity raid. (must have with ssd technology)
• Use ssd for intelligent “l2arc” caching
• Always consistent on disk
• Good startup to learn about zfs read: The last word in file systems http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/zfs_lc_preso.pdf
• Because it's cool to learn something new

Why don’t choose zfs for file server

• You don’t want to have a dedicated server for storage at home
• For standard home usage a cheap nas with raid1 do the job
• You’re a performance freak and just do sequential read and write and don’t care about silent corruption and zfs functionalities
• You don’t want to invest your time to understand and have fun with zfs

My zfs file server hardware

• Amd x2 5050e 45W
• Motherboard “SAPPHIRE PI-AM2RS780G”
• 8gb ram
• Intel pro 1000/100/10
• 1 x 250gb “For system boot... not in mirror yet”
• 3 x 1.5tb raidz “for data”
• 1 x 40gb intel ssd x25-v “For cache l2arc” Read my benchmark
  

RSA Breached: SecureID Affected

According to the announcement, RSA was breached in an APT attack (we don’t know if they mean China, but that’s well within the realm of possibility) and material related to the SecureID product was stolen.

http://securosis.com/blog/rsa-breached-secureid-affected