Quick Hardware Upgrade Question(s)

[bfishernc]

Hi all, I'm planning to upgrade the hardware on my system next week. Overall I'm very pleased but would like a bit more speed when running a few VMs (via NFS on ZFS to vSphere)

I have 8GB RAM (DDR3 1600) and am considering upping it to 16 GB (along with 2x20GB mirror Intel 313 SSD for ZIL and 1x120 GB SSD for L2ARC).

My question - when I add the extra RAM, do I need to do anything to take advantage of it? Or is rebooting the box (since I have to power off to install the ram) enough? I'm assuming FreeNAS will automatically see and use that extra memory without my involvement, right?

(Actually, I have a second question... My mobo can handle up to 32GB memory. It would be about $150 less to just increase to 32 GB and skip the ZIL and L2ARC upgrade... But would I see the same performance gains? Or is this an even better option? My gut is I would still be hampered by the ZIL being on my spinning disks, but might not need the L2arc as much with that much RAM)

Thanks!

 

[ProtoSD]

Don't do ZIL until after FreeNAS upgrades to ZFS v28. There's a bug that can cause you to lose your pool.

So your option to just increase your RAM to 32G sounds like the better choice.

 

[bfishernc]

Thank you for the quick reply!

(hopefully this isnt a sore question) Is ZFS v28 in FreeNAS 8.2 (next release version)? I see it mentioned in an old blog post of yours but i dont see it listed on the what's new list on the website (maybe I'm missing it).

Also, if I mirror the ZIL, is there still significant risk (ie because of a bug) or is this risk pretty minimal (both devices fail)?

Once again - thanks!