[clue] ZFS on Linux?

[Ed Fugikawa]

A couple years ago I tried FreeNAS which was OK, then switched to NAS4Free
<http://www.nas4free.org/> because it seemed more open. For a lot of things
things I wanted to do I needed to ditch the GUI and use the command line.
As soon as ZFS on Linux was deemed production ready I did some tests then
quickly moved to it using Ubuntu since that distro was preferred by other
projects we were involved with and for many of the reasons mentioned by P
B.   We had ~ 50TB of spinning disks when I left that organization.

I like ZFS because it has good documentation and is pretty straightforward
to use.  The really cool thing about ZFS is you can move a datapool to
another machine with very little effort.  I now use it on my Ubuntu desktop
to keep data and my VMs safe.   -Ed

On Sat, Oct 31, 2015 at 2:54 PM, P B <witchbutter at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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 <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
> October 31, 2015 at 12:15 PM
> Does btrfs offer equivalent capabilities?
>
> ------------------------------
> *From: *"Sean LeBlanc" <seanleblanc at comcast.net> <seanleblanc at comcast.net>
> *To: *"CLUE's mailing list" <clue at cluedenver.org> <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 <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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