4 ms·

Part of the challenge with ZFS is its amazing and (almost) nobody uses it. It creates a weird chicken-and-egg scenario with regards to familiarity in production

Part of the challenge with ZFS is its amazing and (almost) nobody uses it. It creates a weird chicken-and-egg scenario with regards to familiarity in production. If Google can get away without using it then why do you need to have it? The reality is: you don't. It's another incredible technical achievement that was amazing for its time, but the world of containers, speed of systems, and abstraction of physical machines have made it more or less a moot point for everyone other than SAN administrators or hardcore COW optimization junkies.

symlinkk 9y ago
what do containers, speed, and abstraction have to do with maintaining the integrity of data? ZFS is the most popular filesystem for NAS's for a good reason...because it checksums data and can tell you (and correct from) failures.
georgyo 9y ago
ZFS works work containers and works well with docker. ZFS is really really amazing, beyond the SAN. It's fantastic for both desktops and servers. The lack of adaption is problematic, but I use it for all sorts of things. Like mirroring snapshots between prod and qa, including the database and assets. I can test complicated software upgrades or database migrations quickly and repeatily. This is not something docker can't do by itself. Much of the stuff I do with ZFS I can now do with btrfs, but ZFS is just so much nicer to work with.
- williamstein 9y ago
  Last week, I created about 500,000 separate zfs pools to back the Docker containers we are running on cocalc. I love ZFS.
linksnapzz 9y ago
" If Google can get away without using it then why do you need to have it?" I think that comment has to go on the Best of 'Shit HN Says' corkboard ere long. I mean, when I am faced w/ a technical challenge at work, or at home...why would my first thought NOT be 'What would Google do in this situation?'
- supremesaboteur 9y ago
  I assume the thinking goes like this : ZFS was designed for enterprises. Enterprise software has requirements of high stability, scale etc. Google is probably on the extreme end of these problems. So if Google considered and rejected ZFS it probably means it was not very good. What probably really happened was that Google was already too invested in Google File System and therefore did not give other file systems a fair chance
  - petters 9y ago
    GFS does not really solve the same problem as ZFS, I think.
  - mjevans 9y ago
    Google's big enough that it, most likely, has something that the public ceph project is a pale imitation of. Actually, they're big enough that something between what ceph can do and what backblaze does is probably their /archive/ backend. They probably have all of the fast stuff on 'disposable' temporary copies in RAM or SSDs.
- beagle3 9y ago
  Do you have the capital that Google has? Do you have the expertise that Google has? Do you have the scale that Google has? Do you have the problems that Google have? I had an employee once who, when tasked with designing an API for use by a partner company, copied MS conventions a-la "CreateWindow", when I asked about adding more functionality he said "I'll just do CreateWindowEx" and "IWebBrowser2". His claim was "If MS is doing that and MS is successful, this must be a good way to do it". After I pointed out that, despite several attempts, there is no MS-Compatible API (this was in 2001, I think reactos and wine had both been started, there had been other attempts at WinAPI emulation, but none was worth anything), and that we had 2-people working on it, not 400, he agreed that perhaps the Unix API is easier to maintain, document and reimplement -- as is evident by many (re)implementations available. For Microsoft, a labour-intensive-to-maintain-and-labour-intensive-to-document API is a benefit, because they can afford it and they are already holding the dominant market position (making it hard to be compatible with them). For a lean team, maintaing this kind of API is a penalty. Similarly in this case, what's good for Google and what's good for you are not necessarily equivalent. Google solves speed, redundancy and reliability by making and managing copies. ZFS makes one single machine the most reliable file system available today. But Google cares not about any single machine. Do you have 100 copies of every important datum? If you don't, then you shouldn't copy Google.
lathiat 9y ago
You'd be surprised how many people do actually use it for dedicated storage applications. With the major backer for OmniOS some (including me) have been moving over to ZoL as a preference. It's a real shame not to have it more integrated otherwise though in less dedicated applications. It's really hard to go back once you are used to zfs send/recv, transparent compression, etc.
stubish 9y ago
To spin up a full system container in a second or two requires a filesystem like ZFS. Its not a moot point, its a requirement even if you are not aware it is under the hood. The first thing you do when setting up LXD for your containers is feed it a ZFS pool.

symlinkk 9y ago

what do containers, speed, and abstraction have to do with maintaining the integrity of data? ZFS is the most popular filesystem for NAS's for a good reason...because it checksums data and can tell you (and correct from) failures.

georgyo 9y ago

ZFS works work containers and works well with docker. ZFS is really really amazing, beyond the SAN. It's fantastic for both desktops and servers. The lack of adaption is problematic, but I use it for all sorts of things. Like mirroring snapshots between prod and qa, including the database and assets. I can test complicated software upgrades or database migrations quickly and repeatily. This is not something docker can't do by itself. Much of the stuff I do with ZFS I can now do with btrfs, but ZFS is just so much nicer to work with.

williamstein 9y ago
Last week, I created about 500,000 separate zfs pools to back the Docker containers we are running on cocalc. I love ZFS.

linksnapzz 9y ago

" If Google can get away without using it then why do you need to have it?" I think that comment has to go on the Best of 'Shit HN Says' corkboard ere long. I mean, when I am faced w/ a technical challenge at work, or at home...why would my first thought NOT be 'What would Google do in this situation?'

supremesaboteur 9y ago
I assume the thinking goes like this : ZFS was designed for enterprises. Enterprise software has requirements of high stability, scale etc. Google is probably on the extreme end of these problems. So if Google considered and rejected ZFS it probably means it was not very good. What probably really happened was that Google was already too invested in Google File System and therefore did not give other file systems a fair chance
- petters 9y ago
  GFS does not really solve the same problem as ZFS, I think.
- mjevans 9y ago
  Google's big enough that it, most likely, has something that the public ceph project is a pale imitation of. Actually, they're big enough that something between what ceph can do and what backblaze does is probably their /archive/ backend. They probably have all of the fast stuff on 'disposable' temporary copies in RAM or SSDs.
beagle3 9y ago
Do you have the capital that Google has? Do you have the expertise that Google has? Do you have the scale that Google has? Do you have the problems that Google have? I had an employee once who, when tasked with designing an API for use by a partner company, copied MS conventions a-la "CreateWindow", when I asked about adding more functionality he said "I'll just do CreateWindowEx" and "IWebBrowser2". His claim was "If MS is doing that and MS is successful, this must be a good way to do it". After I pointed out that, despite several attempts, there is no MS-Compatible API (this was in 2001, I think reactos and wine had both been started, there had been other attempts at WinAPI emulation, but none was worth anything), and that we had 2-people working on it, not 400, he agreed that perhaps the Unix API is easier to maintain, document and reimplement -- as is evident by many (re)implementations available. For Microsoft, a labour-intensive-to-maintain-and-labour-intensive-to-document API is a benefit, because they can afford it and they are already holding the dominant market position (making it hard to be compatible with them). For a lean team, maintaing this kind of API is a penalty. Similarly in this case, what's good for Google and what's good for you are not necessarily equivalent. Google solves speed, redundancy and reliability by making and managing copies. ZFS makes one single machine the most reliable file system available today. But Google cares not about any single machine. Do you have 100 copies of every important datum? If you don't, then you shouldn't copy Google.

lathiat 9y ago

You'd be surprised how many people do actually use it for dedicated storage applications. With the major backer for OmniOS some (including me) have been moving over to ZoL as a preference. It's a real shame not to have it more integrated otherwise though in less dedicated applications. It's really hard to go back once you are used to zfs send/recv, transparent compression, etc.

stubish 9y ago

To spin up a full system container in a second or two requires a filesystem like ZFS. Its not a moot point, its a requirement even if you are not aware it is under the hood. The first thing you do when setting up LXD for your containers is feed it a ZFS pool.