[OmniOS-discuss] How to best build a HA ZFS/NFS storage?

[Stephan Budach]

Hi all,

I am currently thinking of setting up a HA ZFS/NFS filer using RSF-1 for 
my Oracle VM infrastructure and I would like to collect some opinions on 
how to do that? Especially, I'd like to know, if there're any objections 
against setting up ZFS on an iSCSI target which is also setup from a ZFS 
volume.

So, the basic setup would be either

- 2 ZFS boxes, exporting either raw disks via COMSTAR iSCSI and the 
ZFS/NFS host would create the ZPOOL/ZFS
- 2 ZFS boxes, exporting less iSCSI targets from a local ZPOOL/ZFS and 
the ZFS/NFS host would then create it's own ZPOOL/ZFS on top

Each of these setups has it's obvious advantanges, where on the HA host, 
you will have to deal with maybe quite a lot of iSCSI targets, which may 
increase the fail-over time, as there will be a lot of iSCSI logging-on 
going on. While having less iSCSI targets will be easier to administer, 
it's somewhat against ZFS' best practises, I guess. Also, performance 
may be a point, where the 2nd setup has an advatange over the 1st one.

So, how would anyone else here do that?

Cheers,
Stephan