[PANiCnz]

ZFS in fuze is a complete mess avoid it like the plague. If you've got an existing FreeNAS setup have you considered installing the Virtual Box plugin and then install a Windows VM?

Alternatively go for a VMware ESX setup with FreeNAS and various other VM's, you can expose the local drives directly to the FreeNAS VM and import your drives.

[bmcclure937]

Yes. You can import from FreeNAS. You can always import older, you can never import newer.

FreeNAS/FreeBSD is stuck on something like version 14. ZFS Fuse is something like 23.

I do use ZFS Fuse on my girlfriend's server. No redundancy, just 1 disk in a zpool. It scrubs weekly. She's not got anything important on the drive, I just want an early warning on when it is going to start failing.

ZFS in fuze is a complete mess avoid it like the plague. If you've got an existing FreeNAS setup have you considered installing the Virtual Box plugin and then install a Windows VM?

Alternatively go for a VMware ESX setup with FreeNAS and various other VM's, you can expose the local drives directly to the FreeNAS VM and import your drives.

Hmm... I am getting conflicting reports on ZFS in FUSE. Which one of you has more experience with this/can back up their view on ZFS in FUSE with evidence

This will probably factor into my decision. I am just at a rock and a hard place in deciding what to do with my FreeNAS. I can either keep the FreeNAS functioning as-is, update it to the latest build, and then get the services I desire running on it.

Or I can ditch the FreeNAS for Ubuntu or a platform with SoftRAID/ZFS RAIDZ and easily configure the services I want!

[darkscout]

How is it a complete mess? It let me recover something my OpenSolaris choked on. (Open Indiana didn't like one of my RAID controllers that OpenIndiana did).

It's plenty fast for any media. All the data is backed up. Other than it's a FUSE module.

[darkscout]

You can also use ZFS in the Kernel. It currently doesn't support ZPL layer. However you can create virtual disks on the pools and then format those to ext3/ext4.

[bmcclure937]

How is it a complete mess? It let me recover something my OpenSolaris choked on. (Open Indiana didn't like one of my RAID controllers that OpenIndiana did).

It's plenty fast for any media. All the data is backed up. Other than it's a FUSE module.

Good to hear. I am highly interested in this option but still need to do further research.

At this point, I doubt that I am utilizing ZFS to its full capability on my FreeNAS. I am not sure how often scrubs are performed and I do not use any snapshot features. I mainly use the RAIDZ because ZFS is a stable filesystem and was easy to configure on FreeNAS. There were additional benefits but I cannot name them all.

I need to do more research and use my ZFS pool to its full ability!

[darkscout]

If you want a FreeNAS type device there's the NexentaStor, free up to 12TB. Already has snapshotting, NFS, SMB, etc configured with a nice web interface.

I run SolarisExpress. I have SABnzbd, CouchPotato & Sickbeard all running on it just fine.

VirtualBox runs just fine. I have a Debian headless VM (just because I don't feel like getting mencoder/handbrake compiled on Solaris). Going to get Windows something installed just so I have a windows machine. Also pondering putting a XBMC VM on there and setting it up with MySQL and having that be the 'always powered' server that SickBeard/Couch Potato update when new content is available.

[thethirdnut]

+1 for Ubuntu as well since it has the largest Linux user-base by far.

I'm also tempted to give Arch Linux a try, however, there'd be pros + cons to the rolling releases...

[Mach13]

If you're buying BR disks then $120 is of nearly no importance.

Good point indeed, but just a quick reading of the forums here show that hardly none BUY the disk? All should be though. Drying up the well of what we like is kinda dumb.

[avus m3]

ZFS v15 I believe is what the latest stable version is but Solaris is up to like 33 IIRC? I am in the process of switching over to ZFS (using FreeBSD variants) and so far am loving it. With its self healing against corruption and bit rot, speed, flexibility, ease, snapshots, etc, etc, etc it is just AMAZING.

[dr_bones]

hi, im currently in the process of switchg from freebsd to arch linux
not decide about the filesystem tho, but I guess for the time being ext4 as i have problems to share ntfs via smb so I'd like to change to some linux fs
Waiting for openmediavault based on debian.

on the other hand... ZFS
i doubt oracle closed solaris totally, what about "express" edition?

bns

[thethirdnut]

hi, im currently in the process of switchg from freebsd to arch linux
not decide about the filesystem tho, but I guess for the time being ext4 as i have problems to share ntfs via smb so I'd like to change to some linux fs
Waiting for openmediavault based on debian.

on the other hand... ZFS
i doubt oracle closed solaris totally, what about "express" edition?

bns

I also have several options up in the air for future expansion:

What I need is a full *nix desktop + server.

Options are:

-- Debian 6 with ZFS support, but not sure yet about specifics of that implementation

-- BTRFS will be fully Ubunutu, etc supported but its not ready for prime-time.

-- FlexRAID looks interesting and seems to have some of the main selling points of BTRFS + ZFS. Its basically free but 'closed-source' however so would need a further look too.

-- unRAID has very happy and ardent supporters, however, you need to devote a whole machine to just file-serving...it doesn't have bit-rot protection either.

So I give more questions than answers.

[Superorb]

Subscribed.

[bmcclure937]

Subscribed.

You can subscribe without commenting. not sure if you knew.

[darkscout]

There are numerous OSs that run ZFS.

There's also ZFS on fuse, ZFS with the Linux Kernel, etc.

[avus m3]

Don't forget ZFS on Mac OS X (Not really supported but can be implemented).