links to tips and experience using ZFS worth reading

During the searches yesterday about ZFS I found some links I should read after the frustration down to a normal level.

openSolaris documentation

This is the official/ideal start point to find documentation about openSolaris. There are links for use and internal technologies. Also book recommendations

ZFS Best Practices Guide

Only thing to say is "read it!"

Blog describing a ZFS Home Server setup

There are more to read. What I found interesting is ZFS file system and expireiences after 1 year

a Drobo replacement

Used 4 drives as RAIDZ

Overview of the ZFS File System

This sounds promising. This is in a Real Media format. VLC and mplayer only played the tone. At least I was expecting some video or slides. Come one Sun, move your "stuff" to JavaFX!

ZFS tutorial

Not only this two part tutorial looks interesting on this site. Like me he wrote down some experiences using linux, OS X and Solaris.

7 Easy Tips for ZFS Starters

Sun employee writing more about ZFS and openSolaris.

what ZFS pool to create

Yesterday I bought two Western Digital 1.5GB Caviar green. But this are only the drives to start the pool with. To get all my data into the pool using RAIDZ, I need to add the drive to the pool after copying the data from it.
Luckily before starting this I was trying this in the VirtualBox to have all commands ready and not mess up the real data. But it is not possible to expand a RAIDZ:

• Expand-O-Matic RAID-Z


• WHEN TO (AND NOT TO) USE RAID-Z

Sun designed/cares about ZFS in the professional environment. There you don't set up box with only a view drives and add drive after drive. This is only a scenario for the home user. This is only possible with a mirrored
So I will start with the pool with the two 1.5GB drives mirrored. After copying the first two 1GB drives I will add this mirrored to the pool.

OpenSolaris and SiI3114 SATA controller

To build a ZFS file server I bought the DeLOCK Controller SATA, 4 Port with Raid 70154. Unfortunately openSolaris didm't see the drives.

Searching the net I found the following links:

• Build your own multi-terabyte file server with OpenSolaris and ZFS


• SIL3114 Re: SIL3124 stability?


• use update_drv -a -i ' "pci1095,3114" ' ata to recognise the RAID controller


• using the SiI3114 without problems


• he has data corruption


• also checksum errors - some suggestions to fix this


• solution - change BIOS from RAID to "normal"
  
• same solution - tip: don't use FreeDOS to flash the BIOS
  

What I've got out of this is that the controller will give you problems only if the RAID BIOS is flashed. As this is my lucky day my controller had the RAID BIOS. Got the flash tool and the BIOS from Silicon Image web page. And now the real trouble started - getting a machine to boot DOS.
It should be simple as nowadays you could use Windows to flash a BIOS. At least if you have a Windows machine with a PCI slot.
The first attempt to boot FreeDOS from a CF card failed. My BIOS only supported to boot from a USB CDROM not USB flash. But this I count as luck. In one of the post I found later that he killed one of his cards using FreeDOS.
I think I remember the last time I got MS-DOS it came on a CD-ROM. Found it. Didn't boot - the good old days. Remembering the hassle using a CD-ROM from DOS I decided to use a boot diskette. I still have old PC's for nostalgic reasons - but not with a PCI slot.
So, half I day, after I booted with the new SATA controller for the first time, it works with OpenSolaris. But as you can imagine I was not really delighted.