Until today I had never encountered even one read, write or checksum error on my ZFS NAS. Today I saw one checksum error coming from the mirrored SSD root boot pool which I have just installed. Unless you’re using a file system like ZFS (or NetApp / Veritas…$$$), then you’ll almost certainly never even know […]
Tag archives: checksum
Home Fileserver: ZFS File Systems
Once you’ve built your ZFS home fileserver / NAS, you’ll want to create your storage pool, create your file systems and share them to various devices around the home, such as laptops, PC’s, Macs, media centres etc. I will go through all the necessary steps from start to finish, so you can see how to […]
Home Fileserver: A Year in ZFS
Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it as ‘A Year in Provence’, does it? Oh well, never mind. 😉 After a year of using Solaris and ZFS for a home fileserver, I thought I would share my experiences here to give an insight into things that worked or did not work. Also, others have […]
Home Fileserver: Active Directory Integration
Matt Harrison wrote to me recently, to notify me about a guide he’d written showing how to integrate a ZFS-based OpenSolaris fileserver with Microsoft Active Directory. His guide covers all the necessary areas like: configuring Kerberos, synchronizing time/dates, enabling the CIFS server, joining the domain, user and group mapping, ZFS datasets, setting ACLs and auto-sharing […]
Home Fileserver: RAIDZ expansion
Recently I decided to expand the storage capacity of my ZFS home fileserver’s ZFS storage pool, which was configured to use a single RAIDZ vdev comprising of three 750 GB drives. I wanted to expand the RAIDZ vdev by adding one extra 750 GB drive. As you may or may not be aware, it is […]
Home Fileserver: Trunking
I had two Gigabit ethernet ports sitting on this motherboard and I was only using one. So I decided to take the path less travelled, as you never know where it can lead…
Home Fileserver: Suspend
Considering that a fileserver at home will spend a lot (most) of its life idle, it makes sense to look at its power usage and see what steps can be taken to reduce its operational costs — i.e. power consumption.
Home Fileserver: Backups
Now that you’ve got your ZFS Home Fileserver up and running and you’ve got your file systems created and shared to other machines on your home network, now’s the time to consider getting some backup policy in place. I’ll show a few different possibilities open to you.
Home Fileserver: ZFS setup
The next step in setting up your own ZFS home fileserver is to set up your ZFS storage pool and file systems and then share them with other machines. The ZFS commands should work from any operating system where ZFS is available. I have used two machines in this example: a machine running Sun Solaris […]
Home Fileserver: ZFS hardware
After deciding that I would use Sun Solaris and its ZFS file system as the foundation for a home fileserver, the next part was to select compatible hardware, as Solaris has fairly limited driver support for hardware.