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you can run ZFS on Ubuntu [...] You could also build this on Solaris with necessary licensing if you wanted to that route but it’d be more expensive. I find it

by 4ad 9y ago

you can run ZFS on Ubuntu [...] You could also build this on Solaris with necessary licensing if you wanted to that route but it’d be more expensive. I find it bewildering the author didn't even consider illumos or FreeBSD, where ZFS is a first class citizen.

howeyc 9y ago
I thought the same thing, they sort of answers in the comments. Something about freenas saying no support and that the put together systems from iXsystems have lower drive bay counts. My guess is they just prefer Linux. FreeBSD or illumos would definitely work.
qeternity 9y ago
For someone not very up to date with all the various ZFS flavors, can you please explain this a bit?
- overcast 9y ago
  ZFS is a native filesystem to FreeBSD, where as in Linux it is not.
  - X86BSD 9y ago
    It's also had more baking time on FreeBSD.
  - qeternity 9y ago
    Sure but that alone doesn't mean it's any less suitable on Ubuntu. I'm just trying to understand what the differences are in implementation, reliability, etc.
    - cyphar 9y ago
      ZFS-on-Linux has not been mainstream (or existed) for as long as ZFS has been integrated inside FreeBSD. illumos is the free software fork of OpenSolaris -- so it's the repo of record for modern ZFS development.
      - waz0wski 9y ago
        OpenZFS is the parent project from which ZFS is applied to Illumos, FreeBSD, and ZFSoL http://open-zfs.org/wiki/Main_Page http://open-zfs.org/wiki/Main_Page
        cyphar 9y ago
        I'm aware of that, I just didn't want to additionally confuse someone who is barely familiar with ZFS with the whole OpenZFS fork and so on.
    - gruturo 9y ago
      ZFS on FreeBSD and on Illumos has been used, abused, tested and stressed all the way to the Moon and beyond. Loads of people with loads of data over loads time. This makes bugs appear, and get addressed, and eventually gives you confidence that nothing nasty remains uncorrected, and it won't eat your data. ZFS on Linux, due to the unfortunate licensing situation, is considerably less tested and thus scary, data-eating bugs are at least a bit more likely to exist.
      - zorked 9y ago
        On the other hand Linux is far more popular so I wouldn't be surprised if ZFS on Linux already clocks more hours of usage than on BSD.
        gruturo 9y ago
        > On the other hand Linux is far more popular so I wouldn't be surprised if ZFS on Linux already clocks more hours of usage than on BSD. Yes and no. Few people, even among the Linux crowd, are aware it exists or feel like trusting it with important data sets/jobs. Those few are the most likely to be equally at ease running FreeBSD or Illumos (or Solaris), where the damn thing is known to work really well.
    - barrkel 9y ago
      ZoL uses an emulation layer to make Linux look more like something with Unix ancestry, ancestry that BSD and Solaris share. The biggest difference I believe is in memory management / fs cache integration. In practice this means that ZoL may require more memory to be stable, or may be less stable depending on configuration if low in memory. I've run ZFS on Solaris (by way of Nexenta) and Linux since 2008 or so. I haven't seen much reliability difference in practice. I've had fewer hiccups streaming video from Linux though.
seany 9y ago
I run napp-it on omni-os at home and work with good results. It's not too hard to adapt your linux knowledge if you're not used to the solaris-ish userspace.
X86BSD 9y ago
Yeah I was like uhhhh what? Illumos and illumos based OS'es and FreeBSD are the only games in town where ZFS is a first class citizen. Ill chalk it up to extreme bias.
- floatboth 9y ago
  Yeah, many people don't consider FreeBSD because of silly reasons… :( but mentioning Solaris that "requires licensing" and not illumos?? illumos is the new Solaris, the old Solaris devs are working on illumos! Oracle Solaris is irrelevant.
  - al452 9y ago
    > Oracle Solaris is irrelevant. Amen to that.
notpeter 9y ago
It's likely a human resources problem. For every competent FreeBSD or Illumos sysadmin there are 10x equally experienced with Linux. And those numbers are much worse outside of major cities. The commercial support from Ubuntu tips the scales. I made this same decision at my last job. I ran Solaris and Illumos on our file servers and loved it, but a year before I left I ported all the pools to Ubuntu so my successor only needed to be Linux competent and ZFS trainable. Sometimes when choosing tech it's not what's technologically superior solution nor what you personally could run well, it's what's best for your coworkers, your successor and the organization in the long term.
- rdeckard0104 9y ago
  I disagree. FreeBSD is just as easy to administer as Linux. Solaris I find to be a bit more challenging. I can appreciate your commentary, but I challenge you to prove me wrong. Just for some color I've ran the Gambit of Unix and Linux systems in my career with FreeBSD being one of the easiest and most consistent out of the box technologies. Solaris had already been quite the opposite. I guess you could say AIX is a close second to Solaris, but I think that's a bit of a grey area considering how opinionated that operating system is. To be clear I'm not a FreeBSD zealot. I'm for what works. Right now what works is the emerging container based solutions albeit not relevant to this discussion.
  - ethbro 9y ago
    > For every competent FreeBSD or Illumos sysadmin there are 10x equally experienced with Linux. Was parent wrong about that point?
    - chungy 9y ago
      Not exactly, but to any competent administrator, learning FreeBSD based on Linux experience is not that difficult. It's sort of like tasking someone to start working on a program written in Go even if they have only C++ experience. You can cope.
      - 9y ago
panzerboy 9y ago
He explained on Reddit that he has some support from Canonical as well.

by 4ad 9y ago

howeyc 9y ago

I thought the same thing, they sort of answers in the comments. Something about freenas saying no support and that the put together systems from iXsystems have lower drive bay counts. My guess is they just prefer Linux. FreeBSD or illumos would definitely work.

qeternity 9y ago

For someone not very up to date with all the various ZFS flavors, can you please explain this a bit?

overcast 9y ago
ZFS is a native filesystem to FreeBSD, where as in Linux it is not.
- X86BSD 9y ago
  It's also had more baking time on FreeBSD.
- qeternity 9y ago
  Sure but that alone doesn't mean it's any less suitable on Ubuntu. I'm just trying to understand what the differences are in implementation, reliability, etc.
  - cyphar 9y ago
    ZFS-on-Linux has not been mainstream (or existed) for as long as ZFS has been integrated inside FreeBSD. illumos is the free software fork of OpenSolaris -- so it's the repo of record for modern ZFS development.
    - waz0wski 9y ago
      OpenZFS is the parent project from which ZFS is applied to Illumos, FreeBSD, and ZFSoL http://open-zfs.org/wiki/Main_Page http://open-zfs.org/wiki/Main_Page
      - cyphar 9y ago
        I'm aware of that, I just didn't want to additionally confuse someone who is barely familiar with ZFS with the whole OpenZFS fork and so on.
  - gruturo 9y ago
    ZFS on FreeBSD and on Illumos has been used, abused, tested and stressed all the way to the Moon and beyond. Loads of people with loads of data over loads time. This makes bugs appear, and get addressed, and eventually gives you confidence that nothing nasty remains uncorrected, and it won't eat your data. ZFS on Linux, due to the unfortunate licensing situation, is considerably less tested and thus scary, data-eating bugs are at least a bit more likely to exist.
    - zorked 9y ago
      On the other hand Linux is far more popular so I wouldn't be surprised if ZFS on Linux already clocks more hours of usage than on BSD.
      - gruturo 9y ago
        > On the other hand Linux is far more popular so I wouldn't be surprised if ZFS on Linux already clocks more hours of usage than on BSD. Yes and no. Few people, even among the Linux crowd, are aware it exists or feel like trusting it with important data sets/jobs. Those few are the most likely to be equally at ease running FreeBSD or Illumos (or Solaris), where the damn thing is known to work really well.
  - barrkel 9y ago
    ZoL uses an emulation layer to make Linux look more like something with Unix ancestry, ancestry that BSD and Solaris share. The biggest difference I believe is in memory management / fs cache integration. In practice this means that ZoL may require more memory to be stable, or may be less stable depending on configuration if low in memory. I've run ZFS on Solaris (by way of Nexenta) and Linux since 2008 or so. I haven't seen much reliability difference in practice. I've had fewer hiccups streaming video from Linux though.

seany 9y ago

I run napp-it on omni-os at home and work with good results. It's not too hard to adapt your linux knowledge if you're not used to the solaris-ish userspace.

X86BSD 9y ago

Yeah I was like uhhhh what? Illumos and illumos based OS'es and FreeBSD are the only games in town where ZFS is a first class citizen. Ill chalk it up to extreme bias.

floatboth 9y ago
Yeah, many people don't consider FreeBSD because of silly reasons… :( but mentioning Solaris that "requires licensing" and not illumos?? illumos is the new Solaris, the old Solaris devs are working on illumos! Oracle Solaris is irrelevant.
- al452 9y ago
  > Oracle Solaris is irrelevant. Amen to that.

notpeter 9y ago

It's likely a human resources problem. For every competent FreeBSD or Illumos sysadmin there are 10x equally experienced with Linux. And those numbers are much worse outside of major cities. The commercial support from Ubuntu tips the scales. I made this same decision at my last job. I ran Solaris and Illumos on our file servers and loved it, but a year before I left I ported all the pools to Ubuntu so my successor only needed to be Linux competent and ZFS trainable. Sometimes when choosing tech it's not what's technologically superior solution nor what you personally could run well, it's what's best for your coworkers, your successor and the organization in the long term.

rdeckard0104 9y ago
I disagree. FreeBSD is just as easy to administer as Linux. Solaris I find to be a bit more challenging. I can appreciate your commentary, but I challenge you to prove me wrong. Just for some color I've ran the Gambit of Unix and Linux systems in my career with FreeBSD being one of the easiest and most consistent out of the box technologies. Solaris had already been quite the opposite. I guess you could say AIX is a close second to Solaris, but I think that's a bit of a grey area considering how opinionated that operating system is. To be clear I'm not a FreeBSD zealot. I'm for what works. Right now what works is the emerging container based solutions albeit not relevant to this discussion.
- ethbro 9y ago
  > For every competent FreeBSD or Illumos sysadmin there are 10x equally experienced with Linux. Was parent wrong about that point?
  - chungy 9y ago
    Not exactly, but to any competent administrator, learning FreeBSD based on Linux experience is not that difficult. It's sort of like tasking someone to start working on a program written in Go even if they have only C++ experience. You can cope.
    - 9y ago

panzerboy 9y ago

He explained on Reddit that he has some support from Canonical as well.