[OpenIndiana-discuss] Backups and snapshots

[Dan Swartzendruber]

Gabriele Bulfon wrote:
> Thanx for the reply ;)
> I read somewhere that NFS is much slower than having an iscsi device.
> Somewherelse they said the contrary....
> What if I have a virtual openindiana server? should I zfs over an exported zfs device?
> Nooo...I don't think so....so NFS.
> Is it good for cyrus/postfix and so on?
> Then...what about a postgres db on NFS? and MySQL?
> About windows.......should I boot on the iscsi disk? I don't think so...
> What about SQLServer (...yes...people us it...) data files?...no way, just iscsi or local disks....
> It's a complete mess....backup is a mess here...
> But I love ZFS :) that's why I brainstorm at 22:00 here :
>   
If you have a ZIL or run the NFS share in async mode, the performance is 
very good.  I am running an all in one appliance.  e.g. ESXi on a 
quad-core xeon with 16GB ECC RAM.  A virtual OI with 7GB of RAM and two 
virtual cores.  The OI VM runs on a small virtual disk on the ESXi local 
datastore.  6 SATA drives in a 3/2 raid10 pool.  The controller is 
passed in to the OI VM via vmware vmdirectpath, so it has direct access 
to the sata controller and drivers.  A share on the pool is then 
exported back to the ESXI itself.  That NFS datastore is where all of 
the other VMs live.  Performance is very good.