Marginal hardware, ZFS vs. UFS

[Ron Robertson]

I've got two identical old Supermicro servers, left over from my NAS4Free days.

X8ST3-F motherboard, Xeon e-5504 2.0GHz quad core. If I combine my RAM from the two boards, I'll populate every slot to 6GB total. Drives will be either 2TB or 3TB, six of them likely in a RaidZ2. The hardware has been verified to be trouble free.

I don't need encryption on this box, and use would be strictly for backups and non-essential file storage. At most there would be three users at any point simultaneously.

Do I run ZFS given my 6GB ram limitation, or fall back to UFS?

 

[cyberjock]

If you plan to go with 12-18TB(which is what I'm getting from your 2TB and 3TB comment) I wouldn't go ZFS. Performance will probably be horrible. If I were trying to help a friend build a server with that kind of size I wouldn't do less than 16GB of RAM. From personal experience it performs great, then suddenly goes off a cliff. Next thing you know performance is so bad its painful to open word documents.

I'd do UFS unless you can get more RAM. There's no reason why you can't buy 2x8GB sticks and have a great ZFS machine(aside from the cost of course). That CPU is certainly capable of taking care of ZFS.

 

[Ron Robertson]

Thanks, cyberjock. I've sprung for 12GB of RAM. The board is a triple channel setup for ECC, so 16GB is not an option. However, IF the existing RAM and the new can coexist peacefully, I would wind up with a 15GB configuration...which would be a weird number, but there's no reason why it matters other than being unusual.

If the new and old don't get along, I'll likely run on UFS.