Carve up Intel Optane 900p (280GB) for ZFS rpool + ZIL

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FrackingStorage

New Member
Mar 1, 2019
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0
1
Hi All,

Just picked up an Intel Optane 900p - 280GB. Using all of it for ZIL/SLOG seems excessive. I'm looking to use part of it as a zfs rpool to boot Debian, the rest as ZIL - is this a good move? Any other recommended configurations?

It may be a little overkill, though my use case is for media library, backups, vm storage and use containers.

Any advice welcome.
 

StevenDTX

Active Member
Aug 17, 2016
493
173
43
I split mine for ZIL and SLOG. Been working great for a few months now.

Code:
  pool: vmware-pool-1
 state: ONLINE
  scan: none requested
config:

    NAME                       STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM      CAP            Product /napp-it   IOstat mess          SN/LUN
    vmware-pool-1              ONLINE       0     0     0
      mirror-0                 ONLINE       0     0     0
        c0t5000CCA22BC4EC12d0  ONLINE       0     0     0      4 TB           Hitachi HDS72404   S:0 H:0 T:0          PK2331PxxxxxT
        c0t5000CCA22BE17DC5d0  ONLINE       0     0     0      4 TB           HGST HDS724040AL   S:0 H:0 T:0          PK1331PAxxxxxS
      mirror-1                 ONLINE       0     0     0
        c0t5000CCA23DC3BC69d0  ONLINE       0     0     0      4 TB           HGST HDS724040AL   S:0 H:0 T:0          PK1334PBxxxxxS
        c0t5000CCA23DC3D80Dd0  ONLINE       0     0     0      4 TB           HGST HDS724040AL   S:0 H:0 T:0          PK1334PBxxxxxX
      mirror-2                 ONLINE       0     0     0
        c0t5000CCA23DC3EF3Cd0  ONLINE       0     0     0      4 TB           HGST HDS724040AL   S:0 H:0 T:0          PK1334PBxxxxxS
        c0t5000CCA249D59A3Dd0  ONLINE       0     0     0      4 TB           HGST HDN724040AL   S:0 H:0 T:0          PK2338P4xxxxxC
    logs
      c20t1d0p1                ONLINE       0     0     0      36.4 GB                           S:0 H:2 T:0          PHMB742300xxxxxCGN
    cache
      c20t1d0p2                ONLINE       0     0     0      238 GB                            S:0 H:2 T:0          PHMB742300xxxxxCGN
 

StevenDTX

Active Member
Aug 17, 2016
493
173
43
OS is on a VMDK.

Code:
 id       part   identify   stat   diskcap   partcap   error   vendor   product   sn
 c1t0d0   1,2   via dd    ok   32.2 GB   32.2 GB    S:0 H:0 T:0   ATA   VMware Virtual S   000000000000000
 

StevenDTX

Active Member
Aug 17, 2016
493
173
43
got it, and your esxi host presumably is running off a usb or something and not the intel 900p?
ESXi is running on a mirrored set of some enterprise 800GB SSDs...I forget which ones. Thats for boot and local storage for the NappIT VM and VCSA. The ZFS pool is presented to a separate cluster of ESXi hosts.

The Optane is passed thru to the NappIT VM. ESXi doesnt really know anything about it.
 

BackupProphet

Well-Known Member
Jul 2, 2014
1,083
640
113
Stavanger, Norway
olavgg.com
ZFS on Linux has very slow ZIL, there is not much to gain here with Optane. It is an order of magnitude faster on FreeBSD. This is a known problem the ZOL developers are working with, but currently not a high priority.

Anyway I highly recommend a small ZIL partition, 8GB is PLENTY!
Additionally depending on how much RAM you have and how many services you have running, add a SWAP partition. I have a 32GB swap partition on my server with 256GB ram, currently 12GB is swapped. Which is fine, they are sleeping processes anyway so the rest of my RAM can be used for more important stuff.
The rest is for the L2ARC.
 

Monoman

Active Member
Oct 16, 2013
408
160
43
ZFS on Linux has very slow ZIL, there is not much to gain here with Optane. It is an order of magnitude faster on FreeBSD. This is a known problem the ZOL developers are working with, but currently not a high priority.

Anyway I highly recommend a small ZIL partition, 8GB is PLENTY!
Additionally depending on how much RAM you have and how many services you have running, add a SWAP partition. I have a 32GB swap partition on my server with 256GB ram, currently 12GB is swapped. Which is fine, they are sleeping processes anyway so the rest of my RAM can be used for more important stuff.
The rest is for the L2ARC.
This is exactly my experience. ZIL on ZoL is crazy slow. Even when used for sequential writes.