FreeBSD & Software RAID

[Gary Gatten]

What about with PAE and/or other extension schemes?

If it's just memory requirements, can I assume if I don't have a $hit
load of storage and billions of files it will work "ok" with 4GB of RAM?
I guess I'm just making sure there isn't some bug that only exists on
the i386 architecture?



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Matthew Seaman
Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2009 1:38 PM
To: Gary Gatten
Cc: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
Subject: Re: FreeBSD & Software RAID

Gary Gatten wrote:
> Why avoid ZFS on x86?

Because in order to deal most effectively with disk arrays of 100s or
1000s
of GB as are typical nowadays, ZFS requires more than the 4GB of
addressable
RAM[*] that the i386 arch can provide.

You can make ZFS work on i386, but it requires very careful tuning and
is not
going to work brilliantly well for particularly large or high-throughput
filesystems.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

[*] Technically, it requires more than the typical 2GB of kernel memory
that
is the default on i386.  KVM under 64bit architectures can be *much*
bigger
than that.

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                   7 Priory Courtyard
                                                  Flat 3
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey     Ramsgate
                                                  Kent, CT11 9PW






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