# FreeBSD 7.1 as a 3yr ZFS server?



## LightningCrash (Oct 2, 2009)

Questions about FreeBSD as a 3yr storage server

I'm reworking my personal network at home and I am considering FreeBSD as the basis for the storage server for my home network.

Briefly, I'm assembling a quad core machine with 8GB of RAM inside a Norco 4020 and giving a VM direct assignment of the disks for storage purposes.

Ultimately I'm only interested in having the storage server provide NFS to the other hosts on the network.
That being said, I have two major requirements:
-Storage platform OS should be subject to security patches for, at minimum, 3 years.
-Storage platform should be able to expand the storage arrays as additional drives are added.


How long would FreeBSD 7.1 be subject to security patches? Would I be required to upgrade to a higher release version of the operating system inside 3 years to continue to receive security fixes? I thought I read somewhere that 7.1 would run until 2011, but I can't find it now. 

I am, of course, looking at using ZFS in FreeBSD. If deduplication for ZFS were to be released tomorrow, how soon before we would see a stable implementation inside FreeBSD?
I'm hoping that upgrading to the deduplication revision will not require a major rebuild of the array, but I'm also really good at dreaming.


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## SirDice (Oct 2, 2009)

LightningCrash said:
			
		

> How long would FreeBSD 7.1 be subject to security patches? Would I be required to upgrade to a higher release version of the operating system inside 3 years to continue to receive security fixes? I thought I read somewhere that 7.1 would run until 2011, but I can't find it now.


At the bottom of the page is a table with the dates:
http://www.freebsd.org/security/


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## LightningCrash (Oct 2, 2009)

SirDice said:
			
		

> At the bottom of the page is a table with the dates:
> http://www.freebsd.org/security/



Thanks. I'd searched for "end of life" but didn't think to hyphenate.

Do major-to-major upgrades still use freebsd-upgrade?


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## SirDice (Oct 2, 2009)

LightningCrash said:
			
		

> Do major-to-major upgrades still use freebsd-upgrade?


Yes and minor-to-minor too.


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## foo_daemon (Oct 5, 2009)

A small 'caveat emptor' (snipped from the handbook):


> The freebsd-update utility can automatically update the GENERIC kernel only. If a custom kernel is in use, it will have to be rebuilt and reinstalled after freebsd-update finishes installing the rest of the updates.


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## hedwards (Oct 5, 2009)

Depending upon your needs, it's trivial to swap a ZFS array into a new computer, especially if you mount the disks in an external enclosure. Just bear in mind that it's likely a good idea to label or in some other fashion keep track of which disk is which just in case of some glitch in the process.

Plus you should probably disconnect any backup capacity while doing upgrades just in case.


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