February | 2014 | Focus Determines Reality

I set this up only to test ZFS with deduplication as an alternative to using a standard hardware RAID configuration for storing SQL backups.

Hardware used:

Dell R720xd
Dell Perc H800 RAID controller
Dell PowerVault MD1220

Configure RAID on the Dell R720xd / Perc H800 controller. All 24 disks (2.5″ 900GB SAS in my case) as an independent RAID-0 logical volume since the H800 (as far as I can tell) doesn’t support an easy JBOD option.
In Windows Server 2012 Computer Management, I set each of the 24 volumes to GPT partition table when asked, and then set all 24 volumes “offline”. Doing so allows Hyper-V to access each disk directly, so that Windows cannot.
Install the Hyper-V role and rebooted.
I went into the VMs settings. First I added a SCSI controller, since IDE Controllers are limited to 2 devices, while SCSI can support up to 64 devices. Then I added the 24 volumes as “physical hard disks”, matching the SCSI location number 0 – 23 to the 24 volume target number 0 – 23.
Also, make sure to install a virtual switch and configure your network interface for the Ubuntu VM.
Downloaded Ubuntu Server 12.04 x64, installed Ubuntu with OpenSSH and Samba features. Started the Ubuntu VM.
Verify Ubuntu can see the 24 volumes:
```
sudo lshw -C disk
```
```
sudo apt-get update
```

sudo apt-get install python-software-properties software-properties-common -y

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:zfs-native/stable -y

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y

```
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-zfs -y
```

dmesg | grep ZFS

[    0.000000] Command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-3.11.0-15-generic root=/dev/mapper/DPMHOST--ZFS--vg-root ro
 [    0.000000] Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-3.11.0-15-generic root=/dev/mapper/DPMHOST--ZFS--vg-root ro
 [    8.529432] Adding 4190204k swap on /dev/mapper/DPMHOST--ZFS--vg-swap_1.  Priority:-1 extents:1 across:4190204k SSFS

```
sudo vim /etc/modules
```
Add these lines:
```
spl
zavl
znvpair
zunicode
zcommon
zfs
```
Incorporate new modules into the boot files:
```
sudo update-initramfs -u
```
```
sudo reboot
```

I created a ZFS pool called “zfs0” using raidz3 which can lose up to 3 disks using all 24 volumes:

sudo zpool create zfs0 raidz3 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd /dev/sde /dev/sdf /dev/sdg /dev/sdh /dev/sdi /dev/sdj /dev/sdk /dev/sdl /dev/sdm /dev/sdn /dev/sdo /dev/sdp /dev/sdq /dev/sdr /dev/sds /dev/sdt /dev/sdu /dev/sdv /dev/sdw /dev/sdx /dev/sdy -f

sudo zpool status

pool: zfs0
 state: ONLINE
 scan: none requested
 config:

NAME        STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
 zfs0      ONLINE       0     0     0
 raidz3-0  ONLINE       0     0     0
 sdb     ONLINE       0     0     0
 sdc     ONLINE       0     0     0
 sdd     ONLINE       0     0     0
 sde     ONLINE       0     0     0
 sdf     ONLINE       0     0     0
 sdg     ONLINE       0     0     0
 sdh     ONLINE       0     0     0
 sdi     ONLINE       0     0     0
 sdj     ONLINE       0     0     0
 sdk     ONLINE       0     0     0
 sdl     ONLINE       0     0     0
 sdm     ONLINE       0     0     0
 sdn     ONLINE       0     0     0
 sdo     ONLINE       0     0     0
 sdp     ONLINE       0     0     0
 sdq     ONLINE       0     0     0
 sdr     ONLINE       0     0     0
 sds     ONLINE       0     0     0
 sdt     ONLINE       0     0     0
 sdu     ONLINE       0     0     0
 sdv     ONLINE       0     0     0
 sdw     ONLINE       0     0     0
 sdx     ONLINE       0     0     0
 sdy     ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors

sudo zfs list

NAME   USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
 zfs0   297K  16.7T  89.8K  /zfs0

df -h

Filesystem                         Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
 /dev/mapper/DPMHOST--ZFS--vg-root   15G  1.5G   13G  11% /
 udev                               2.0G  4.0K  2.0G   1% /dev
 tmpfs                              790M  668K  789M   1% /run
 none                               5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
 none                               2.0G     0  2.0G   0% /run/shm
 /dev/sda1                          236M   32M  192M  14% /boot
 zfs0                                17T  128K   17T   1% /zfs0

Configure Samba:
```
sudo vim /etc/samba/smb.conf
```

sudo zfs set sharesmb=on zfs0/backuptest1

```
sudo chmod 0777 /zfs0/backuptest1
```
```
sudo service smbd restart
```

sudo zfs get sharesmb,sharenfs

NAME              PROPERTY  VALUE     SOURCE
zfs0              sharesmb  off       default
zfs0              sharenfs  off       default
zfs0/backuptest1  sharesmb  on        local
zfs0/backuptest1  sharenfs  off       default