# FreeBSD + ZFS + PAE?



## Simba7 (Aug 30, 2011)

I have 2 systems that are running dual 2.4GHz Xeon processors and 12GB of memory each and around 5.5TB of RAID5.

The problem is, will ZFS throw a fit due to it being an i386 architecture? They're running Linux right now, but would love to get rid of it and switch over to FreeBSD.


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## wblock@ (Aug 30, 2011)

Not the amd64-compatible version of Xeons?  ZFS will run on i386, and there's some mailing list mention of PAE being better than not using that extra memory.


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## AndyUKG (Aug 30, 2011)

I guess you'd be restricted in ARC size due to running i386 (as opposed to amd64) but other than that I don't see why it wouldn't work. However PAE should be, according to the FreeBSD documentation, "considered beta quality" so bear that in mind. There are a few other comments on it here:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/kernelconfig-config.html

Basically if you can use amd64 that is always preferable.

ta Andy.


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## Simba7 (Aug 30, 2011)

Believe me if I could run amd64, I would. These don't have that capability, though.
http://ark.intel.com/products/27269/Intel-Xeon-Processor-2_40-GHz-512K-Cache-400-MHz-FSB

It does look like I'll be tweaking the heck out of things. I do enjoy a good challenge.


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## AndyUKG (Aug 30, 2011)

ZFS is fairly stable on i386 now, so you should be ok regarding that. You should follow the guides for setting up ZFS as if it was an i386 machine with 4GB RAM I think, then your other programs can take advantage of PAE and the extra RAM. As I said, the link I posted mentions some other important points about PAE on FreeBSD, such as some drivers are not supported on PAE at all so take a careful look before you decide if its a good idea to proceed. I've not used PAE on FreeBSD so I'm not sure just how many common drivers are unsupported...

Andy.


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## davidgurvich (Aug 30, 2011)

PAE does not work well on FreeBSD.  You are very likely to have problems.  If you want ZFS I would suggest using solaris.  The 32-bit kernels use PAE and are well tested.  Openindiana is the current freely available option of solaris since Oracle bought Sun.  Openindiana lacks driver support and software but the drivers that exist work well.


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