August 1, 2018
We have a central instance of smbd that we allow users to have home directories on, as well as project specific shares. It’s a beefy ZFS on Linux instance that we call “tank” in reference to Jeff Bonwick’s discussion of the humble ZFS beginnings within Sun. We run a backup strategy between it and a couple other trailing-mirrored instances that we’ve positioned around the facility. We’ve been eyeing ceph but are waiting to see how BlueStore pans out in the next major ceph releases.
...
February 20, 2018
We’ve recently gotten some significantly larger storage systems and after running some 50T pools with basically all the defaults it felt like time to dig into what common options are used to chase performance. The intended use for these systems is ultimately CIFS/NFS targets for scientists who are running simulations that generate small (1M) to large (100G) files. I’m not being rigorous and offering any benchmarks, just digging into documented performance parameters and explaining the rational.
...
October 23, 2017
I stumbled across this discussion about the ssd parameter that I’d been using in my installation guide and realized that I was very likely afflicted by what was being disucssed in the mailing list. Firing up IRC and jumping into the #btrfs discussion on freenode to ask for some clarification about how I’d examine my current state.
Luckily I was able to talk with several knowledgeable people, and even knorrie who was the original author of the mailing list discussion above.
...
February 4, 2017
As our digital legacies continue to grow with advanced capture systems, its important to consider taking some control over assuring how that legacy is perpetuated. There are many enterprise grade technologies that are within easy reach of the individual who wants to start building out their home lab. Rather than send monolithic emails to people who inquire about this topic it seemed more appropriate to write out my opinions openly, and maintain them as more experience is gained.
...