DAS (connect via E-SATA) with ZFS guide?

[nk215]

Hi Guys,

I would like to try out ZFS machine but connect it to my windows 7 machine via external-SATA port. Does anyone have a link/experience to share? I don’t need anything fancy, just a simple machine around 6TB with around 12G of memory, a 64 SSD for OS, another 128GB SSD for cache.

It would be a DAS since I’ll store photoshop files (pictures) on it and need fast connection to/from the Win7 machine. For backup, I’ll setup up something to copy the files to a RAID5 setup on the same Windows machine.

There are a lot of guides about NAS but not about DAS.
Thank you

 

[greenhawk]

DAS (Direct Attached Storage) generally does not have any guides as it does not have anything to setup in it. It requires a host PC (the one it is connected to) to do all of the processing work. Because of this, it does not run a OS and it is limited to what is on offer from the host pc's controller or software. Therefor, your wanting to run ZFS on the DAS will not work as a DAS on your windows machine, will be controlled and looked after by windows 7.

As to your wanting to connect via esata, it is possible but generally not that fast as you need to use sata port multipliers which are far from fast when trying to use a few drives at once.

In the situation of connection via esata to another PC (NAS or ZFS ect), that is not possible as sata does not support that sort of connection.

To have a DAS, the connected drives can be connected via anything. Wireless, ethernet, USB, sata, firewire, SAS or recently Thunderbolt.

 

[KentState]

The only way that you I'm aware of to accomplish this is to get a controller card to connect the DAS to. Install some type of hyper-visor in Windows 7 and expose the hard drives to a VM running something like FreeNAS or whatever ZFS based product is popular these days.

 

[nk215]

Thank you for the responses. It looks like the only way for me to get similar benefit (as ZFS) is to wait for win8.1 with ReFS.

On the Mac side, Drobo is based on linux but and can direct connect to another machine via thunderbolt. What I was hoping for is a "drobo clone" running linux file system (ZFS) and can directly connect to a PC to gain faster than a 1G network speed

 

[greenhawk]

you can get better speeds with SAS as a extneral cable generally contains 4 drive connectors, so 4 x sata 3 speeds. Adds up but will cost. Sata 2 based ones are affordable and give upto 1200MB/s (4 x 300MB/s).

 

[thecoolnessrune]

The Drobo is sort of a one-off. Even though it's kind of a DAS (you're connecting a single machine via a Thunderbolt cable), in implementation, it's really a NAS with support for a single connection. I say this in the sense that you're connecting to a virtualized storage appliance running its own OS and Storage system, and all your end system is seeing is the pre-created storage target.

FYI, the Drobo 5D supports both Thunderbolt and USB 3.0. 5Gbps is (nearly) the equivalent of a SATA III port. Realistically you can squeeze 3.5-4Gbps out of the port.

One review gave the most optimistic use by taking 5 4TB hard drives, and striping them with a single 1TB partition (max speed). They were able to pull 2.8Gbps reads and 2Gbps writes. Keep in mind that is the best you're likely to see on the unit. Using any sort of BeyondRAID parity, fewer discs, or smaller disks will bring your max realizable speeds even lower, due to the processor in that unit already being at its limit.

My guess, if using Drobo is your goal, is that you're unlikely to see any difference between using Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 on that unit.