Storage: ZFS

Native ZFS for Linux on Proxmox 2.0

• 2012-02-25. check  http://zfsonlinux.org/ See the Documentation and Community Resources for more information and help.

I had tried 3 other operating systems including Debian/kFreebsd and for each was able to recover all the zfs file systems from previous installs. Even with disk name changes [bsd uses ad11, linux sdb ] no data was lost. Today I set up zfsonlinux using the following info on 2 prox 2.0 systems

using dkms

# apt key
apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys  F6B0FC61

#sources:
echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/zfs-native/stable/ubuntu lucid   main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/zfs.list

aptitude update

aptitude install dkms pve-headers-$(uname -r)

• this needs to be done manually.

Maybe someone who knows how to write a patch could submit one and suggest this be done when kernel is upgraded? Otherwise I think when the Proxmox kernel upgrades, dmks build may fail if this is not done .

ln -s /lib/modules/2.6.32-10-pve/build /lib/modules/2.6.32-10-pve/source

then install zfs

aptitude install ubuntu-zfs

using git

• install these

aptitude install build-essential gawk alien fakeroot zlib1g-dev uuid uuid-dev libssl-dev parted  pve-headers-$(uname -r) 

• get make and install spl

cd /usr/src
git clone https://github.com/zfsonlinux/spl.git
cd spl
./configure
make deb
dpkg -i *.deb
modprobe spl

• get make and install zfs

cd /usr/src
git clone https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs.git
cd zfs
./configure
make deb
dpkg -i *.deb

• make sure module can load

modprobe zfs

• install debs does not do this:

update-rc.d zfs defaults

• note , the deb files made above can be used to install zfs on another system.

• if there is a pre existing zfs pool then simply use the next line to recover it. this can happen if you re-install proxmox and have zfs disks from before.

zpoo  </cman>

• If there is a need or want I could set up a repository with pre build debs. Just send an email .

Creating Pools and Filesystems

use raidz2 or mirror in main data systems.

Create a raidz pool named “tank”

zpool create  -f -o ashift=12 tank  raidz  /dev/sda  /dev/sdb  /dev/sdc  /dev/sdd  /dev/sde  /dev/sdf  /dev/sdg  /dev/sdh

• note this happened to 2 or 3 disks the 1-st time. these were disks from a 3-ware raid.

zpool create  -f -o ashift=12 tank  raidz2   /dev/sda  /dev/sdb  /dev/sdc  /dev/sdd  /dev/sde  /dev/sdf  /dev/sdg  /dev/sdh
invalid vdev specification
the following errors must be manually repaired:
cannot stat /dev/sdg2: No such file or directory

had to use fdisk to add partitions 1 , 2 etc to those disks . I forget if I left the partitions there or not. but had to add to get this fixed.

Create directories and mount points

zfs create tank/data
zfs set mountpoint=/data tank/data

• mount all

zfs mount -a

destroy

to start over

zpool destroy zfs-pool

Setting Properties

• Automatically NFS-export all home directories [ I do not know how to use zfs nfs yet , or if it works yet in linux...].

zfs set sharenfs=rw tank/home

• check sharenfs

zfs get sharenfs tank/home
NAME     PROPERTY  VALUE     SOURCE
tank/home  sharenfs  rw        local

• Turn on compression for everything in the pool

zfs set compression=on tank

kvm tuning

see thread on prox forum , per user Nemesiz :

• pool:

zfs set primarycache=all tank

• kvm config:
• change cache to Write Back

You can do it using web GUI or manually. Example:

ide0: data_zfs:100/vm-100-disk-1.raw,cache=writeback

if not set this happened:

qm start 4016
kvm: -drive file=/data/pve-storage/images/4016/vm-4016-disk-1.raw,if=none,id=drive-virtio1,aio=native,cache=none: could not open disk image /data/pve-storage/images/4016/vm-4016-disk-1.raw: Invalid argument

zfs links and docs

• http://zfsonlinux.org/faq.html

• http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/download/Community+Group+zfs/docs/zfslast.pdf

and this has some very important information to know before implementing zfs on a production system.

• http://www.solarisinternals.com/wiki/index.php/ZFS_Best_Practices_Guide

check these well written manual pages:

man zfs

man zpool

How to install ZFS-fuse under Proxmox

(Tested with Kernel 2.6.32)

 apt-get install build-essential libaio-dev libattr1-dev libacl1-dev libz-dev libz-dev libfuse-dev libfuse2 scons libssl-dev
 wget -nd http://zfs-fuse.net/releases/0.6.0/zfs-fuse-0.6.0.tar.bz2
 tar jxvf zfs-fuse-0.6.0.tar.bz2
 cd zfs-fuse-0.6.0
 cd src
 scons
 scond install

Fire up ZFS-fuse daemon

 /usr/local/sbin/zfs-fuse

Create Zpool

 zpool create -m /var/lib/vz/images2 /dev/sdb

Create ZFS

 zfs create images2/109

ZFS clone a vm 109 to vm 110

 zfs snapshot images2/109@master
 zfs clone images2/109@master images2/110

Debian GNU/kFreeBSD

As of 2012-02 the squeeze version does not have NFS, so AFAIK can not be used for Proxmox storage. When Debsd has nfs support then I'd use this for storage of iso's and backups to start. In the mean time this works as a samba server..

zfs works much better using Debian/GNU kFreeBSD then fuse.

after installing the system to kvm or hardware:

• add some disks . in KVM i was only able to get ide to work.

• the scsi disks look like:

ls /dev/ad*
/dev/ad10  /dev/ad10s1  /dev/ad10s2  /dev/ad11  /dev/ad12  /dev/ad13

• per http://www.solarisinternals.com/wiki/index.php/ZFS_Best_Practices_Guide - if I read it right - use entire disk not slices for zfs (I assume slices = partitions).

• if the disks have partition tables, then clear them. just not the operating system disk! I used fdisk to clear the tables. This may not be necessary , if it is not then please delete this part.

fdisk /dev/ad11
o
w

then same for ad12 and ad13

• install this

aptitude install zfsutils

• make a pool

zpool create -f  zfs-pool /dev/ad11 /dev/ad12  /dev/ad13

df | grep zfs-pool
zfs-pool       zfs    1.4T   18K  1.4T   1% /zfs-pool

• http://wiki.debian.org/Debian_GNU/kFreeBSD