• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

State of ZFS on Linux

D

dighn

Lifer
I'm building a new file server and initially I wanted to go with FreeBSD + ZFS because it seems to be a more mature implementation of ZFS than on Linux. But frankly I'd rather deal with Linux because it seems to be much more up to date.

So my question is, isthe FUSE implementation of ZFS on Linux actually usable and stable enough for an archiving NAS? The machine I'm using is pretty beefy for a NAS (for transcoding and other uses): i3 530, 4 GB RAM.
 
Last edited:
IMO, don't hold your breath for it anytime in the near future.

My guess is that Oracle (who acquired Sun) will concentrate their efforts on BtrFS. Experimental versions have already been included in recent distro releases (available as a filesystem option in Opensuse 11.2...with many warnings), and we'll see a stable release of BtrFS sooner than we will ZFS.
 
Agree with all above, it's way too flaky.

Perhaps you can use XFS if your concern is large file sizes and you're looking for steady transfer rates. XFS also respects Windows ACLs if you need to go cross platform. I'm unsure of your needs so disregard if it doesn't fit the bill.
 
I've used XFS on virtually everything except for /boot since it's 1.0 release many years ago. That with Linux software RAID and LVM should give you 95% of the functionality of ZFS.
 
I'm going with ZFS mainly for its reliability. Yes I know I'm being paranoid and software RAID5 would take care of the most likely modes of failure.

Anyway I played around with FreeBSD 8.0 last night and so far I'm able to get around in it and hardware seems compatible enough. Now I just need to check if I can run the software I want to run.
 
dighn said:
I'm going with ZFS mainly for its reliability. Yes I know I'm being paranoid and software RAID5 would take care of the most likely modes of failure.

Anyway I played around with FreeBSD 8.0 last night and so far I'm able to get around in it and hardware seems compatible enough. Now I just need to check if I can run the software I want to run.
Click to expand...

Every time I touch a BSD it just makes me yearn for the package management in Debian...
 
Building everything from source gets old... even with a relatively fast machine. After much battle, a kernel panic (I foolishly thought 4GB was enough for default ZFS settings), and a lot of googling, I managed to get the core functions working (ZFS, Samba, PS3 Media Server). The rest should be easier.
 
Nothinman said:
Except for when you've got to update things and have to rebuild everything again and again...
Click to expand...

oh yes I did a portmanager -u and it felt like it was rebuilding the entire frigging distribution. And as a bonus, it broke transcoding of some files...
 
How is the i/o on FreeBSD 8? It has been shitty since v6 and overall not competitive with the latest version of RHEL. I think XFS would be your best bet for linux if you feel that you need that kind of file system. I admit, ZFS is a nice piece of work and may be one of the best enterprise-grade filesystems currently available but it's not production ready on Linux due to licensing issues...and the fuse workaround kinda defeats the whole point. You may as well just install Open Solaris and set up linux as a virtual machine if you're willing to go the duck tape route.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top