Netgate 3100, 22.01 and ZFS?

DeltaOne

Having trouble finding out if I can switch to ZFS on a Netgate 3100?

Have upgraded to 22.01 and it's running fine. I understand that if ZFS will work on this hardware it means starting over, formatting as ZFS and then reinstalling from a backup.

Thanks for any advice!

SteveITS

@deltaone That's my understanding, and that ZFS is the new default.
https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/solutions/sg-3100/reinstall-pfsense.html

rcoleman-netgate

@deltaone Correct, in order to reformat the filesystem you need to start from the image file.

You can request it by opening a ticket here: https://www.netgate.com/tac-support-request

DeltaOne

@rcoleman-netgate and @SteveITS

That's good news. I've opened a ticket at the URL you supplied.

Thanks!

stephenw10

Not on the 3100 though. ZFS is not enabled on the 32bit ARM images due to the inherent performance issues. Unfortunately that's unlikely to change.

Steve

DeltaOne

@stephenw10

Okay. My research found a couple of hits that mentioned the 32 bit ARM limitation.

The 3100 is on a UPS and we're careful to do a controlled shut down when necessary, so the file system should stay clean even though it's not ZFS.

stephenw10

Yes, you shouldn't normally see any issues.

If you don't have packages that require large file stores (Snort/Suricata) you can also enable RAM disks which pretty much eliminates filesystem issues. I've been running that here and have yet to see a problem with my 3100 despite numerous hard reboots.

Steve

DeltaOne

@stephenw10

Interesting. Is this the best info on setting up a RAM disk?

Any other tips or pointers? Thanks!

stephenw10

I usually use double the default values there, which are the minimum values really. So 80MB and 120MB. If you are running packages using /tmp or /var be sure to watch it when you first switch because that can fill then quickly and cause problems.
Enabling ramdisks requires a reboot.
If you do lose power you will lose anything stored there since the last backup so that's usually logs and rrd files. But it will boot back up.

Steve

DeltaOne

@stephenw10

Thanks!