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We use zfsonlinux in production already. Have for years. It's had some issues, some have been fixed, some not yet. (I'm usually the go-to person to deal with th

We use zfsonlinux in production already. Have for years. It's had some issues, some have been fixed, some not yet. (I'm usually the go-to person to deal with the deepest ZFS issues.) Last I load tested FreeBSD ZFS it wasn't much different: a different set of issues. Some problems, some fixes. We're now using btrfs too. What's your technical beef with ZFS on Linux anyway?

laumars 9y ago
He's not against ZoL. He's just saying that ZFS is a first class citizen on FreeBSD so if ZFS is amongst your concerns for that server, then picking an OS where ZFS if a first class citizen makes some logical sense. To be honest I do agree with him. I find FreeBSD to be close enough to Linux that any backend engineer or operator worth their salt should be able to swap between the two platforms. Nearly all the same tools that are available on Linux are available on FreeBSD, plus a few tools of it's own. I'm not advocating FreeBSD everywhere though - Linux has it's strengths too which would make it a better platform in other domains. But sometimes it feels like people turn to ZoL without even considering FreeBSD - which is a real pity as FreeBSD + ZFS is a dream to administrate. It's a lot easier than people expect and by not even entertaining the idea of FreeBSD I think they're missing an opportunity. This is all ideal world scenario stuff though. I do appreciate there are often other factors that complicate the decision making. Sometimes even political rather than technological factors.
- sethhochberg 9y ago
  For us in particular, a big deciding factor was actually monitoring when we decided to consolidate our storage servers on ZFS on Linux (migrating a couple that were FreeBSD back to Linux). ZFS works well enough on either these days, and most of our linux folks are certainly comfortable enough in BSD-land, but our primary server monitoring stack at the time (NewRelic's server/infrastructure agents) doesn't have any BSD support at all and they didn't have interest in adding it, so we went back to the other set of tools we knew (linux) which integrated better with the other tooling we used and didn't have time to replace. The purists who try to suggest ZFS should be used from BSD whenever possible are probably forgetting "perfect is the enemy of good"
  - laumars 9y ago
    I don't think the grandparent poster was talking from a purist perspective though (I certainly wasn't). I think s/he was more interested why so few people consider FreeBSD. It might be the case that everyone runs into a deal breaker like yourselves but I think sometimes people don't consider FreeBSD simply because it isn't Linux. However I do completely agree with your points as well. I feel your pain with NewRelic as I've also ran into a few brick walls with them. In fact on Linux as well (not tried NewRelic agents on FreeBSD).

laumars 9y ago

He's not against ZoL. He's just saying that ZFS is a first class citizen on FreeBSD so if ZFS is amongst your concerns for that server, then picking an OS where ZFS if a first class citizen makes some logical sense. To be honest I do agree with him. I find FreeBSD to be close enough to Linux that any backend engineer or operator worth their salt should be able to swap between the two platforms. Nearly all the same tools that are available on Linux are available on FreeBSD, plus a few tools of it's own. I'm not advocating FreeBSD everywhere though - Linux has it's strengths too which would make it a better platform in other domains. But sometimes it feels like people turn to ZoL without even considering FreeBSD - which is a real pity as FreeBSD + ZFS is a dream to administrate. It's a lot easier than people expect and by not even entertaining the idea of FreeBSD I think they're missing an opportunity. This is all ideal world scenario stuff though. I do appreciate there are often other factors that complicate the decision making. Sometimes even political rather than technological factors.

sethhochberg 9y ago
For us in particular, a big deciding factor was actually monitoring when we decided to consolidate our storage servers on ZFS on Linux (migrating a couple that were FreeBSD back to Linux). ZFS works well enough on either these days, and most of our linux folks are certainly comfortable enough in BSD-land, but our primary server monitoring stack at the time (NewRelic's server/infrastructure agents) doesn't have any BSD support at all and they didn't have interest in adding it, so we went back to the other set of tools we knew (linux) which integrated better with the other tooling we used and didn't have time to replace. The purists who try to suggest ZFS should be used from BSD whenever possible are probably forgetting "perfect is the enemy of good"
- laumars 9y ago
  I don't think the grandparent poster was talking from a purist perspective though (I certainly wasn't). I think s/he was more interested why so few people consider FreeBSD. It might be the case that everyone runs into a deal breaker like yourselves but I think sometimes people don't consider FreeBSD simply because it isn't Linux. However I do completely agree with your points as well. I feel your pain with NewRelic as I've also ran into a few brick walls with them. In fact on Linux as well (not tried NewRelic agents on FreeBSD).