Following up from a
thread last June, it's topical to discuss ZFS again. For those of you who've missed it, ZFS is now
semi-officially supported on OS X. A variety of useful features don't yet work, such as booting from ZFS, direct access to snapshots, and there are still bugs (iTunes isn't happy, and neither is Spotlight). Nonetheless, this is a big step ahead. I wouldn't bet the integrity of my data on it. Yet.
Which leads to an intriguing question. My old Infrant file server is too slow and is full. Time for something new. I need to get this running in the next few weeks. I'm currently thinking I'll go the clone route. Based on
our discussion in October, I'm leaning toward going barebones and getting the
Norco DS-520. However, it's going into a sizable closet where noise is less of an issue than in my previous house. This leads me to wonder whether I should just go for a generic beige-box PC. Ultimately, I'll install OpenSolaris, thus maximizing the chances of ZFS "just working." I figure that one benefit of the Norco box over other "server" boxes is that it's sufficiently generic that just about anything should run on it, and that it has a VGA jack, so I can at least see what's going on when I'm trying to install it. Or, should I just go with a beige-box PC?