# ZFS on a "low performance" Soekris net5501?



## kaarposoft (Feb 28, 2010)

Dear all,

I am installing FreeBSD 8 on a Soekris net5501 device.
This is a "low performance" box with a 500 Mhz AMD Geode LX and 512Mb RAM.
It is supposed to work as a simple home/small business server with kerberos/ldap/nfs/samba.

The box is shut down by simply removing power (on software shutdown, ACPI etc).
So, the disks are likely to be corrupted.
Indeed after 5 or 10 power-off/power-on cycles, the UFS2 filesystems where damaged beyond repair.

So, my question is: Does it make sense to install ZFS on such a "low performance" box?
And if yes, any particular tunables I should watch out for?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions on this.

/Henrik


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## Jago (Feb 28, 2010)

i386 arch and 512mb ram is a guaranteed recipe for disaster. Let put it this way (and generalize a bit):

i386 with 1gb ram or less = unworkable
i386 with 2-4gb of ram = requires heavy tweaking for stability
amd64 with 1-2gb ram = might require minor tweaking
amd64 with 4gb ram ore more = will (with very rare exceptions) run great without any tweaking at all

In your particular case, I would look into implementing the use of GJournal on your system.


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## Lowell (Feb 28, 2010)

Jago's advice makes sense, but is specific to running ZFS, although it doesn't say so.  [My own server does in fact run nicely on an i386 with 512MB of RAM.]

Another approach worth mentioning might be getting a UPS smart enough to shut down the server properly before removing power.  The end users wouldn't have to change their habits, and the filesystems wouldn't be getting such abuse.


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## Jago (Feb 28, 2010)

And yeah, my "list" was specifically referring to ZFS use.


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## kaarposoft (Feb 28, 2010)

Hi Lowell and Jago,

Thank you for your answers!

I guess ZFS is out of the question in my case ))-:

/Henrik


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