I've not used LVM snapshotting before so it'll be good to experiment with it and understand it's advantages and limitations. It may not keep the end users (almost all developers) happy so I might need to revisit.

If ZFS is a requirement do you think ZFS on Ubuntu rather than ZFS on FreeBSD say?
I'd need to get a lot more familiar with FreeBSD which is the disadvantage but maybe it's worthwhile?

Thanks all, I very much appreciate lots of great advice.
I've already got a XenServer installed and I'm going to take a look at Xen Orchestra now. As regards OS/Filesystems OpenSuse (or Centos) with XFS and LVM will get some testing in the near future.

@scottalanmiller said in OS/Filesystem for file server ~ 8Tb:

@Doyler3000 said in OS/Filesystem for file server ~ 8Tb:

We're almost entirely a linux operation here though we have a few windows clients.

Just have to mention that this fact makes ESXi a weird choice as you need a range of skills instead of being able to focus on the ones that you have. If you have Linux skills, you are ready for KVM or Xen :)

In my (shaky) defence I had stronger VMWare skills than Linux skills at the time :-)

@scottalanmiller Sorry, my choice of terminology didn't make things very clear there. By replicating I mean replicating the functionality rather than the snapshots themselves. At the moment if I developer deletes a file by mistake they can go to the .zfs folder in the root of their home and restore the file from one of the daily snapshots. I think if they were no longer able to do the equivalent of this, that I might get some resistance.

Yes I'd keep using Veeam for backups. I'd class the snapshotting and backups as different functions really. I'd be hoping to use the snapshots for restoring single files or directories, the backups more for restoring the file server in a disaster.

£600 will keep me in beer for quite a while. I don't drink like I used to :-(

So with Centos as the VM, would you use LVM snapshotting? ZFS on linux and BTRFS are not quite production ready seems to be a common (possibly wrong) consensus. There would be complaints if we lost the file system snapshotting that ZFS allows.

Without wanting to draw out the virtualisation platform questions anymore let me just say that the £600 or something we paid for essentials is not outrageous given that it's the platform

1. I'm most familar with and
2. the people in the company who would have to step in if I wasn't around are most familiar with

I completely accept that Xenserver and it's bells and whistles come for free and I'll definitely take it into consideration when I'm implementing a solution.

Now onto the filesystem and OS for the VM :-) !

I get the centralised management, plus the agentless backup. And it's quite a bit cheaper than essentials plus as I remember. High availabilty is not a major concern for us.

Yes I can use Veeam (I use the free version) with vcenter on essentials to backup VMs

and yes it's snapshotting at the file level I'd need to replicate the daily zfs snapshots we've got now.