ZFS is an advanced filesystem from Sun Microsystems, originally developed
for solaris. It provides a number of advanced features, such as live
integrity checks, atomic updates, atomic snapshots and clones, compression,
and much more.

This package provides an implementation of Sun's ZFS filesystem in userspace,
using FUSE.

So I actually did this not too long ago.

To be honest, after doing a lot of research into RAID arrays, I decided it was too scary. If a hardware RAID card dies, you lose all your data. If your motherboard in a software RAID array dies... you lose all your data.

Not to mention, as disk sizes grow to 2TB, there is a relatively high chance of unrecoverable failure for sectors. This can again cause you to lose all you data. Upwards of 30% chance of complete data loss. Too high of a risk for me.

Solution? Well, it's not the best option now, but I ended up using a linux distro with ZFS (alternatively BTRFS is now included in the linux kernel and individually you can evaluate it's stability for your use).

The reasoning? ZFS is entirely software based... and if one drive in a ZFS pool dies, you can recover your data. It also does checksumming, so while you're writing your data, it checks to make sure it's valid, and if it's not, repairs it from the data parity. Plus, because it's software, it can be (and I have) transported in it's entirety to a different machine. To boot ZFS also allows you to dynamically add and remove disks from an array. It's really working out well for me. Once I set it up, I haven't had to mess with it since. Granted, it's not as fast as a native filesystem (it's running through FUSE), but for media storage, it's plenty fast enough.

To top it off, the box I built has HDMI, Wireless N, and 2 gigabit connections on an entirely gigabit network. It's faster to mount CD images over the network than directly, and movies, music, and all of it are in one handy location. Install Rygel on your distro of choice and DLNA streaming sends all your media (transcoding included) to your favorite PS3, XBox, networked TV, or even your nifty networked DVD player. It can push media to 3 family computers, and our TV in the bedroom without breaking a sweat.

All in all, I think it cost me about $800, but prices have come down since then, and with 4x2TB drives, I have a total usable array of just over 7TB. So if you really need 8, make it 5x2TB or 3/4x3TB.

Everyone will say good hardware is important, but if you want truly reliable drives (corporate quality) you're looking at spending twice the price. More on higher capacity drives.

That's my input.

Failisysteemi rammi puhverdamine peaks olema ju hea idee? Kui mingi alates 8GB ram olemas. V6i on ikka serveri teema?

ZFS -i kohta lugesin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS alagruppi ZFS cache: L2ARC, ZIL . Et see ei annaks linuxi peal siis midagi ? BSD kernel siis ei toimi nii ?