I'm looking to build one box to run:
1. A ZFS NAS home file server and archive.
2. A small linux hypervisor to run virtual machines for testing.
I may migrate some of these VMs to physical machines at some point.
Additionally, if possible, I want to incorporate my existing heterogeneous hardware into my ZFS array. (old smart phones, laptop hard drives, desktop hard drives, external hard drives...)
I'm trying to stretch my dollars as far as they will go.
I'm very new to ZFS, but I'm currently trying to test ZFS setups on VirtualBox VMs of FreeBSD, Debian kFreeBSD, Fedora, NAS4Free, Ubuntu Server, FreeNAS, OpenIndiana,...
The problem is I'm using a 32-bit lenovo t60p laptop with a dual core processor and 3 GB of RAM --my newest computer. It's about 7 years old and ZFS needs more RAM....
Questions:
1. Can a virtual machine be used to manage a physical ZFS NAS system? (Can a VirtualBox VM do this?)
2. Does anyone know of any use cases where this type of all in one box has been built?
3. Are there motherboards with 6-12 JBOD and/orRAID HDD slots, slots for 32 GB RAM, 8+ USB 3.0 ports, 3 external monitor ports...?
4. Are there sites that allow you to do advanced searches for motherboards?
5. Are there sites to check hardware compatibility?
6. Is it possible to reconstruct a ZFS array from a snapshot or are ZFS snapshots different?
7. What is the most stable ZFS system for NAS type configurations? FreeBSD?
8. Is anyone using ZFS on linux for NAS production environments? It seems rather unstable to me.
9. I plan to use an intel processor. Any suggestions on a processor, motherboard.....? I've looked at the IBM XEON E78870 10C 2.40G 30MB Microprocessor, but it's way out of my price range.
Any suggestions, criticisms, or other inputs will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
1. A ZFS NAS home file server and archive.
2. A small linux hypervisor to run virtual machines for testing.
I may migrate some of these VMs to physical machines at some point.
Additionally, if possible, I want to incorporate my existing heterogeneous hardware into my ZFS array. (old smart phones, laptop hard drives, desktop hard drives, external hard drives...)
I'm trying to stretch my dollars as far as they will go.
I'm very new to ZFS, but I'm currently trying to test ZFS setups on VirtualBox VMs of FreeBSD, Debian kFreeBSD, Fedora, NAS4Free, Ubuntu Server, FreeNAS, OpenIndiana,...
The problem is I'm using a 32-bit lenovo t60p laptop with a dual core processor and 3 GB of RAM --my newest computer. It's about 7 years old and ZFS needs more RAM....
Questions:
1. Can a virtual machine be used to manage a physical ZFS NAS system? (Can a VirtualBox VM do this?)
2. Does anyone know of any use cases where this type of all in one box has been built?
3. Are there motherboards with 6-12 JBOD and/orRAID HDD slots, slots for 32 GB RAM, 8+ USB 3.0 ports, 3 external monitor ports...?
4. Are there sites that allow you to do advanced searches for motherboards?
5. Are there sites to check hardware compatibility?
6. Is it possible to reconstruct a ZFS array from a snapshot or are ZFS snapshots different?
7. What is the most stable ZFS system for NAS type configurations? FreeBSD?
8. Is anyone using ZFS on linux for NAS production environments? It seems rather unstable to me.
9. I plan to use an intel processor. Any suggestions on a processor, motherboard.....? I've looked at the IBM XEON E78870 10C 2.40G 30MB Microprocessor, but it's way out of my price range.
Any suggestions, criticisms, or other inputs will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.