<div dir="ltr"><div>A couple years ago I tried FreeNAS which was OK, then switched to<a href="http://www.nas4free.org/"> NAS4Free</a> 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.<br><br>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 <br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Oct 31, 2015 at 2:54 PM, P B <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:witchbutter@gmail.com" target="_blank">witchbutter@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Also Phoronix has done loads of testing comparing btrfs and ext4 and
repeatedly shown it to perform poorly.
<a href="https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=search&q=Btrfs" target="_blank">https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=search&q=Btrfs</a><br>
<span></span><br>
<blockquote style="border:0px none" type="cite">
<div style="margin:30px 25px 10px 25px"><div style="width:100%;border-top:1px solid #edeef0;padding-top:5px"> <div style="display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;vertical-align:middle;width:49%">
<a href="mailto:seanleblanc@comcast.net" style="color:#737f92!important;padding-right:6px;font-weight:bold;text-decoration:none!important" target="_blank">Sean LeBlanc</a></div> <div style="display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;vertical-align:middle;width:48%;text-align:right"> <font color="#9FA2A5"><span style="padding-left:6px">October
31, 2015 at 1:06 PM</span></font></div> </div></div>
<div style="color:#888888;margin-left:24px;margin-right:24px"><span class="">
<div>Hrm, didn't know about that one.
*googles*<br>
<br>
Dug this up, and started reading the thread.<br>
<br>
<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/32cu9w/zfs_vs_btrfs/" target="_blank">https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/32cu9w/zfs_vs_btrfs/</a><br>
<br>
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?<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
<br>
On 10/31/15 12:15 PM, <a href="mailto:dennisjperkins@comcast.net" target="_blank">dennisjperkins@comcast.net</a> wrote:<br>
</div>
<br>
</span><span class=""><div>_______________________________________________<br>clue mailing
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<div style="margin:30px 25px 10px 25px"><div style="width:100%;border-top:1px solid #edeef0;padding-top:5px"> <div style="display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;vertical-align:middle;width:49%">
<a href="mailto:dennisjperkins@comcast.net" style="color:#737f92!important;padding-right:6px;font-weight:bold;text-decoration:none!important" target="_blank">dennisjperkins@comcast.net</a></div> <div style="display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;vertical-align:middle;width:48%;text-align:right"> <font color="#9FA2A5"><span style="padding-left:6px">October
31, 2015 at 12:15 PM</span></font></div> </div></div><div><div class="h5">
<div style="color:#888888;margin-left:24px;margin-right:24px"><div style="font-family:Arial;font-size:12pt;color:#000000"><div>Does btrfs offer equivalent
capabilities?<br></div><div><br></div><hr><div style="color:#000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;font-family:Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12pt"><b>From:
</b>"Sean LeBlanc" <a href="mailto:seanleblanc@comcast.net" target="_blank"><seanleblanc@comcast.net></a><br><b>To: </b>"CLUE's
mailing list" <a href="mailto:clue@cluedenver.org" target="_blank"><clue@cluedenver.org></a><br><b>Sent: </b>Saturday,
October 31, 2015 10:27:36 AM<br><b>Subject: </b>[clue] ZFS on Linux?<br><div><br></div>Anyone
doing this? As many of you may or may not know, I dabble in the <br>BSDs
from time to time, and one of those more recent outcomes of that <br>dabbling
was a FreeNAS server I set up about 2 years ago to support Time <br>Machine
for macs as well as content for a Plex server.<br><div><br></div>I just
sort of dove headlong into it, and didn't much background reading <br>on
ZFS itself. Since I'm now thinking of getting more drives (but cannot <br>really
afford them until maybe next year) and probably backing <br>up/reconfiguring,
I thought I'd read about it, so I picked up the <br>FreeBSD Mastery:
ZFS book and started reading it.<br><div><br></div>They give a bit more
background on ZFS - I didn't realize that Snoracle <br>took it closed
source after acquisition, and that what is commonly <br>called "ZFS" is
probably really OpenZFS, and that Snoracle has their own <br>version
now, different than what the rest of world calls ZFS.<br><div><br></div>Anyway,
I got to wondering about the state of ZFS on Linux and see there <br>is
a site: <a href="http://zfsonlinux.org/" target="_blank">http://zfsonlinux.org/</a><br><div><br></div>Anyone here have any
experience with it? Is ZFS poised to be a <br>mainstream thing on Linux,
or is there something else more likely to <br>fill that role?<br>_______________________________________________<br>clue
mailing list: <a href="mailto:clue@cluedenver.org" target="_blank">clue@cluedenver.org</a><br>For information, account
preferences, or to unsubscribe see:<br><a href="http://cluedenver.org/mailman/listinfo/clue" target="_blank">http://cluedenver.org/mailman/listinfo/clue</a><br></div><div><br></div></div><div>_______________________________________________<br>clue
mailing list: <a href="mailto:clue@cluedenver.org" target="_blank">clue@cluedenver.org</a><br>For information, account
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</div></div><div style="margin:30px 25px 10px 25px"><div style="width:100%;border-top:1px solid #edeef0;padding-top:5px"> <div style="display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;vertical-align:middle;width:49%">
<a href="mailto:seanleblanc@comcast.net" style="color:#737f92!important;padding-right:6px;font-weight:bold;text-decoration:none!important" target="_blank">Sean LeBlanc</a></div> <div style="display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;vertical-align:middle;width:48%;text-align:right"> <font color="#9FA2A5"><span style="padding-left:6px">October
31, 2015 at 10:27 AM</span></font></div> </div></div><span class="">
<div style="color:#888888;margin-left:24px;margin-right:24px"><div>Anyone doing this? As many
of you may or may not know, I dabble in the <br>BSDs from time to time,
and one of those more recent outcomes of that <br>dabbling was a
FreeNAS server I set up about 2 years ago to support Time <br>Machine
for macs as well as content for a Plex server.<br><br>I just sort of
dove headlong into it, and didn't much background reading <br>on ZFS
itself. Since I'm now thinking of getting more drives (but cannot <br>really
afford them until maybe next year) and probably backing <br>up/reconfiguring,
I thought I'd read about it, so I picked up the <br>FreeBSD Mastery:
ZFS book and started reading it.<br><br>They give a bit more background
on ZFS - I didn't realize that Snoracle <br>took it closed source after
acquisition, and that what is commonly <br>called "ZFS" is probably
really OpenZFS, and that Snoracle has their own <br>version now,
different than what the rest of world calls ZFS.<br><br>Anyway, I got to
wondering about the state of ZFS on Linux and see there <br>is a site:
<a href="http://zfsonlinux.org/" target="_blank">http://zfsonlinux.org/</a><br><br>Anyone here have any experience with it?
Is ZFS poised to be a <br>mainstream thing on Linux, or is there
something else more likely to <br>fill that role?<br>_______________________________________________<br>clue
mailing list: <a href="mailto:clue@cluedenver.org" target="_blank">clue@cluedenver.org</a><br>For information, account
preferences, or to unsubscribe see:<br><a href="http://cluedenver.org/mailman/listinfo/clue" target="_blank">http://cluedenver.org/mailman/listinfo/clue</a><br></div></div>
</span></blockquote>
<br>
</div>
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