[OpenIndiana-discuss] experimental or otherwise not recommended options for ZFS

[Sašo Kiselkov]

On 01/30/2012 04:48 AM, Jan Owoc wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm building a home NAS so I don't care too much about performance,
> but *do* care if I lose all my photos. I'm aware that ZFS had a very
> extensive test suite that ensured that data is kept safe.
> 
> Are the newer capabilities (specifically checksum=sha256,
> compression=on, dedup=verify) thoroughly tested and guaranteed to keep
> my data safe? Are any of the above options considered experimental or
> otherwise not recommended if one cares about data integrity? The
> documentation I encounter enumerates or explains the options without
> going into detail about stability or reliability.

The obvious saying springs to mind: "RAID != backup". If you need your
data to be safe, have two copies of it in two geographically separate
locations running in two separate machines. That's the way I treat my
really important stuff (plus I keep my code in git which has sha-1
hashing of all data in it).

If you need a cheapo solution with your NAS build, I recommend hooking
up a pair of external eSATA/USB drives to your box with a ZFS mirror on
them and do regular backups of the main NAS storage pool to it (either
from a simple cron script, or using something more sophisticated, like
zetaback).

Cheers,
--
Saso