[OpenIndiana-discuss] Hitachi 4 TB disks + HP Microserver + OI 151 + ZFS

[Richard Elling]

On May 2, 2012, at 12:25 AM, Mark wrote:

> There are two issues.
> 
> The first is correct partition alignment, the second ashift value.
> 
> In "theory", I haven't tested this yet, manually creating the slices with a start position to sector 64 and using slices instead of whole disks for the zpool devices, and creating with an ashift of 12 may produce the desired outcome.

Default starting offset for slice 0 is sector 256 for 512-byte sector disks.
You shouldn't have to manually touch these unless you are running an
ancient (circa 2006-2007) version of Solaris where the default offset was 34.

> 
> I have used 4k disks (wd20ears) in 3 and 4 disk raidz pools, but they are used for archiving, so just have data dumped to them.
> Few issues on Sata ports, but dodgy on SAS.

That is not encouraging. OTOH, I've never had good experiences with WD drives :-( 
Unfortunately, for those who purchase from Dell or HP, you are often stuck with WD.
At least HP does a decent job of putting up firmware updates. If you want a fright, 
look at HPs fixes for WD firmware :-(
 -- richard

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