Solaris

Hello. I'm a noob, but have managed to get to the point of Solaris storage server running 4 X 3Tb in a RAIDZ pool. My current system is sharing via SMB a few different ZFS devices (puddle/TV, puddle/Movies, puddle/Music, etc).
My main server is going to be OSX, Mountain Lion. What I have set for testing is - have created an iSCSI LUN, no issues, backing is a ZFS storage, created with -s -V 10T - this worked pretty nicely with globalSAN on the Mountain Lion server.
My question is:
would best practice be to set up a separate ZFS drive and create separate iSCSI LUN's going with my current template of separate Movie, TV, Photos, Music (typical home storage server setup). OR - would it be better to just create one LUN based on a total pool size, using -s to allow for an eventual huge pool.

My thoughts are that with separate ZFS drives I think I could still have snapshots of each, or does sharing these by creating LUN's and using iSCSI prevent snapshots and weekly scrubs...

Any help would be appreciated. For a usage, think of a home server. It feeds media to 6 or 7 devices, possibly all at the same time. My Solaris box has dual gigabit, my OSX has dual gigabit, and my switch has gigabit. My switch also has two fibre channel ports for future optional upgrades, as soon as I figure out how to setup fibre channel cards for my x86 Solaris system, as well as my OSX server.

I would approach this from the big picture view down to the technical detail. It seems clear you're providing for redundancy and performance and I think that some of those issues have to work themselves out over time. One question what underlying device or devices comprise the 4X3TB Raidz pool?

First off, you've got a kick-butt system, congratulations... Second, you do realize you've over-engineering this just a little bit. And that's cool, I've done it too, many times. I've probably learned more doing this kind of work than I care to admit. Having said that, if you're serving 6-7 home media clients, I really don't think you can screw this up by choosing the 'wrong' configuration for your server. So, I'd lean towards one big zpool, just to make the administration easier.

Snapshotting an ISCSI device is possible, but you'd have to unmount the LUN before you initiated the ZFS snap. And what are you trying to accomplish with the weekly scrubs? With ZFS that sort of thing really isn't necessary in most cases.

Finally, I've been fairly active on the Mac side of things for a couple of years. I worked with a Drobo Pro and ISCI back in the 10.6.8 days back when there was a free ISCSI client for the Mac. I've got a very nice NAS right now from Netgear that I really wish I could use to it's full potential via ISCSI, but such is life. I've never wanted to spring for the GlobalSAN software.

Oh, why not just stick with your SMB shares? Do you have an application that requires DAS versus NFS shares?

I was going to say the same thing Dustin said...it is high tech.

sorry for the delay.
Response is 6 to 7 media clients, with the main one (living room openelec xbmc) usually spewing the 720 content, often with 5.1 audio so tracks that range from 1.5G to 5G per file. Add to that load the other machines, typical laptops mostly running Windows 7 to be specific but my Mac is in there as well.
My problem is with sharing the shares, or more specifically limiting sharing. I would like to be able to blacklist the kids systems, and their friends systems, access to specific subdirectories.
To spell out an example, purely hypothetical, say I have a ZFS share called TV, that would be a drive, then in that folder lets say I have directories like Glee, and Pretty Little Liars, then files like Dexter, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones. I would want the main system to see all, with read n write (linux box), as well theres a vm on the solaris that also needs RW to all files, then my MacBook and my wife's laptop would have R to all files, also I would want my jailbroke iPad to have R for all... then I slip into the filtered systems. Best case scenario is that the rest of the machines don't even see the Dexter directory.
I had tried to get my Solaris shares to work, but had problems with share permissions, I think I missed on who would log in how sort of thing.
The VM runs a program that sorts TV episodes called "theRenamer" actually, and takes the files from a folder and writes to the server, nicely sorted, renamed, and organized. I was thinking having multiple folders for TV, TV Censored, and TV All or something, but then I have a hard time with any automation scripts due to having to sort separate files in different spots.
I guess what I should be asking is more along the lines of "Could someone help me with permissions sets for Solaris SMB shares?" ?

---------- Post updated at 06:24 PM ---------- Previous update was at 06:23 PM ----------

Also the OSX server *may* consist of a lot of Gigabyte products, including motherboard and video card.

---------- Post updated at 06:34 PM ---------- Previous update was at 06:24 PM ----------



---------- Post updated at 06:37 PM ---------- Previous update was at 06:34 PM ----------

screen cap of the desktop of my MacBook showing 1 - Chicken VNC view of the Solaris server named - I know all creative like - "server". I opened the /puddle zpool to show the ZFS drives. Also 2- the SMB shares mounted on MacBook.
Time drive also mounted is a separate 2Tb drive, doesn't count from the main standpoint of the shares.