Info Napp-it cs web-gui for (m)any ZFS server or servergroups

[gea]

The flavours of ZFS

1. native ZFS in Solaris 11.
   This is the Unix where ZFS was developped for. The most resource efficient and stable ZFS and propably the fastest one. In 20 years I have not seen as many bug reports up to dataloss than on Linux in a few weeks. Native ZFS is not free nor compatible to Open-ZFS. For noncommercial use/tests you can download Solaris 11 cbe for free (current Solaris beta)
   
   
2. Open-ZFS 2.x
   This is the ZFS in BSD, Linux, OSX and Windows. Due the marketshare of Linux, most Open-ZFS development happens here now, so this is mainstream ZFS. A few years ago, Illumos was upstream to Open-ZFS, now Open-ZFS is upstream to Illumos. Main problem here are the number of Linux distributions, each with a different Open-ZFS release or update policy. Checking issue tracker quite often is not a bad idea. For a backup pool it is a good idea to disable features to be less affected by bugs.
   
   
3. Illumos ZFS
   Illumos is the Opensource fork of Solaris. It inherits all of the Solaris advantages like stability, resource efficiency, easyness in handling, the Solaris iSCSI Comstar project or the in ZFS integrated kernelbased SMB server with a superiour integration of Windows ntfs alike ACL. Illumos is compatible to Open-ZFS 2.x but independent from Open-ZFS 2.x. It uses Open-ZFS now as upstream to integrate newer ZFS features after additional stability checks what makes it more stable than Open-ZFS. Illumos Issue tracker shows quite a similar low number of critical issues as Solaris.
   Distributions are very close to Illumos (not as different as the many Linux distributions: NexentaStor (storage appliance), OmniOS (storage OS with a stable/long term stable), OpenIndiana (successor of OpenSolaris) or SmartOS (virtualizer OS, competitor to ESXi or Proxmox)

 

[gea]

How much RAM do I need for napp-it cs

RAM for a ZFS filer has no relation to pool or storage size (beside dedup)!

Calculate 2 GB for a 64bit OS, add 1-2 GB for a Solaris based filer and 3-4 GB for a BSD/Linux/OSX/Windows based filer for minimal read/write caching or ZFS can be really slow. RAM above depends on web-gui, numer of users or files, data volatility or wanted storage performance. Add more RAM for diskbased pools than SSD pools for a good performance.

With napp-it cs I suggest 8 GB for the Windows machine where the frontend web-gui is running, 16GB if you additionally use ZFS on Windows on that machine.

For the ZFS filers that you want to manage with napp-it cs there is no additional RAM requirement for the server app what means that napp-it cs can manage a Solaris/Illumos based ZFS filer with 2-3 GB RAM and a BSD/Linux/OSX/Windows ZFS filer with 4-6 GB RAM what may allow to manage even a small ARM filerboard with ZFS like a Raspbee up from 2GB remotely with a ZFS web-gui (you only need ZFS and Perl on it).

If you use ZFS on such a board, you may try and report.

btw:
Disk > Maps in napp-it cs
not finally ported all features but should be already very useful

Howto:
- select member server ex Free_BSD_14, OSX or Win-11
- create a disk map in menu Disks > Map > add
- assign disks to slots in same menu
- printout Map (I usually print screenshots, easier to scale)
place ontop the server to identify disks on problems

 

[gea]

Ultra Tiny ZFS Server

Raspberry 4 can be managed remotely by the napp-it cs web-gui
Just upload folder cs_server and start via
perl /path_to_cs_server/start_server_as_admin.pl

# uname -a raspberry4~192.168.2.89
Linux phoscon 5.10.103-v7l+ #1529 SMP Tue Mar 8 12:24:00 GMT 2022 armv7l GNU/Linux

ps aux
pi 30136 0.0 0.2 16540 10104 pts/0 S 15:23 0:00 perl /tmp/cs_server/server.pl
pi 30138 0.0 0.1 11192 4880 pts/0 S 15:23 0:00 perl /tmp/cs_server/monitor.pl

Resource needs are ultra low by the two napp-it cs processes on the pi.

Not the perfect tiny ZFS server with USB but should work with self powered USB disks.
Cnances are high that other Arm boards like Odroid M1 with M.2/ Sata work as well