[clue] ZFS on Linux?

[P B]

I just dismantled my FreeNAS about a year ago and I can confirm it works 
very very well.  But basically anything you want to do with FreeNAS can 
be done with ZFS on linux with the right packages.  FreeNAS does make a 
lot of things easier if you are in a hurry.

I've done a number of setups with zfsonlinux that have worked well for 
backup/file solutions.  As far as distro, it is far easier to deal with 
ZFS on Ubuntu LTS.  Basically every other distro will break during 
various kernel upgrades and it's really not worth the effort of using it 
as the root filesystem, but it's excellent for large data partitions.  
CentOS is the only other tolerable option.  This is because using ZFS on 
linux implies using a special ZFS distributed version of DKMS which will 
compile zfs modules every time the kernel is changed.  Every once in a 
while a rebuild fails and simply won't work with that kernel.  Kernel 
upgrades often also force you to remove and re add the zpool the first 
time you boot with that kernel.

I would also say that ZFS works ok as a datastore for virtual machines 
although I've seen comparisons that complain about performance issues I 
never encountered.  That being said I always set up a SLOG on a a pair 
of SSDs because that combined with a huge amount of memory cache (at 
least 16GB) improves performance a lot.

I continue to use OpenZFS on OSX with a Mac Pro to store a large amount 
of audio files.  I scrub my data every few weeks to verify it and it has 
been trustworthy.

I would also say to read the manual pertaining to the software you want 
to use because many linux projects do not work on ZFS, most recently I 
discovered it's a very poor choice for MongoDB.  This is also true of BTRFS.

BTRFS has been this great promise for years that has never panned out.  
3 years ago I attended a SLES 11 release event where they claimed all 
kinds of things about what BTRFS was going to be able to do, but as far 
as I know it's still not stable now.  I expected with the release of 
RHEL 7 that we would hear an announcement about BTRFS being supported 
but instead Red Hat chose to support XFS.  That alone should make you 
wonder about it's stability.

Also Phoronix has done loads of testing comparing btrfs and ext4 and 
repeatedly shown it to perform poorly.  
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=search&q=Btrfs

> Sean LeBlanc <mailto:seanleblanc at comcast.net>
> October 31, 2015 at 1:06 PM
> Hrm, didn't know about that one. *googles*
>
> Dug this up, and started reading the thread.
>
> https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/32cu9w/zfs_vs_btrfs/
>
> Looks like it will offer more features than ZFS and will satisfy some 
> people's desire license-wise (GPL)...when it's ready? Given that 
> people are saying big companies are funding active development, maybe 
> that's not too far off?
>
> Maybe it's a vim vs. Emacs thing, though. But it's good to have 
> options and maybe the two projects will push each other toward further 
> excellence.
>
> I wonder how hard it is to get ZFS on Linux, though. I also wonder how 
> well ZFS in a VM scenario (guest or host) works for either Linux or 
> FreeBSD. I wish I still had my stable of desktops/servers around to 
> experiment with.
>
>
> On 10/31/15 12:15 PM, dennisjperkins at comcast.net wrote:
>
> _______________________________________________
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> dennisjperkins at comcast.net <mailto:dennisjperkins at comcast.net>
> October 31, 2015 at 12:15 PM
> Does btrfs offer equivalent capabilities?
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From: *"Sean LeBlanc" <seanleblanc at comcast.net>
> *To: *"CLUE's mailing list" <clue at cluedenver.org>
> *Sent: *Saturday, October 31, 2015 10:27:36 AM
> *Subject: *[clue] ZFS on Linux?
>
> Anyone doing this? As many of you may or may not know, I dabble in the
> BSDs from time to time, and one of those more recent outcomes of that
> dabbling was a FreeNAS server I set up about 2 years ago to support Time
> Machine for macs as well as content for a Plex server.
>
> I just sort of dove headlong into it, and didn't much background reading
> on ZFS itself. Since I'm now thinking of getting more drives (but cannot
> really afford them until maybe next year) and probably backing
> up/reconfiguring, I thought I'd read about it, so I picked up the
> FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS book and started reading it.
>
> They give a bit more background on ZFS - I didn't realize that Snoracle
> took it closed source after acquisition, and that what is commonly
> called "ZFS" is probably really OpenZFS, and that Snoracle has their own
> version now, different than what the rest of world calls ZFS.
>
> Anyway, I got to wondering about the state of ZFS on Linux and see there
> is a site: http://zfsonlinux.org/
>
> Anyone here have any experience with it? Is ZFS poised to be a
> mainstream thing on Linux, or is there something else more likely to
> fill that role?
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> Sean LeBlanc <mailto:seanleblanc at comcast.net>
> October 31, 2015 at 10:27 AM
> Anyone doing this? As many of you may or may not know, I dabble in the
> BSDs from time to time, and one of those more recent outcomes of that
> dabbling was a FreeNAS server I set up about 2 years ago to support Time
> Machine for macs as well as content for a Plex server.
>
> I just sort of dove headlong into it, and didn't much background reading
> on ZFS itself. Since I'm now thinking of getting more drives (but cannot
> really afford them until maybe next year) and probably backing
> up/reconfiguring, I thought I'd read about it, so I picked up the
> FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS book and started reading it.
>
> They give a bit more background on ZFS - I didn't realize that Snoracle
> took it closed source after acquisition, and that what is commonly
> called "ZFS" is probably really OpenZFS, and that Snoracle has their own
> version now, different than what the rest of world calls ZFS.
>
> Anyway, I got to wondering about the state of ZFS on Linux and see there
> is a site: http://zfsonlinux.org/
>
> Anyone here have any experience with it? Is ZFS poised to be a
> mainstream thing on Linux, or is there something else more likely to
> fill that role?
> _______________________________________________
> clue mailing list: clue at cluedenver.org
> For information, account preferences, or to unsubscribe see:
> http://cluedenver.org/mailman/listinfo/clue

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