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> Agreed, horrible idea for the time being, but you made it seem as if ZFS could run on these low resource systems. I've installed ZFS on a machine with only 1

> Agreed, horrible idea for the time being, but you made it seem as if ZFS could run on these low resource systems. I've installed ZFS on a machine with only 1GB of ram. Yea that's a lot for an embedded device, But it's not a lot of RAM in the grand scheme of things. Was it fast, no, but it definitely worked.

X86BSD 9y ago
Exactly. But it does work. I’m being down voted by the clueless brigade.
- tmikaeld 9y ago
  Maybe not all because of your points, but rather that HN is allergic to a preachy attitude. Try to stay objective while humble and it will work better.
- jsjohnst 9y ago
  As the other commenter stated, the downvotes are most likely due to the holier than though attitude. It’s ok to be passionate and knowledgeable, but nobody wants to deal with jerks.
Fnoord 9y ago
When we talk about relatively small amounts of RAM its not telling a lot how much RAM the device has but rather how much RAM is devoted to ZFS. Because an Android device on 1 GB RAM is a completely different beast than a FreeNAS devoted to serving files running 1 GB RAM. The same is true for 512 MB, 2 GB, etc. PS: And was it ECC RAM?
- empthought 9y ago
  > PS: And was it ECC RAM? This myth seriously needs to die. ZFS does not care one whit what kind of RAM you use, any more than my other type of filesystem does. Who puts ECC RAM in a small, low-power, embedded-style system like an RPi? It makes no sense.
  - X86BSD 9y ago
    It makes sense to this degree only, if you DONT use ECC no matter where you are using ZFS you are introducing potential checksum errors in the data path. ECC is not that much more than normal ram. To me it makes no sense to run ZFS even if in some tiny home NAS and leave the data path vulnerable to corruption of any kind. Why bother with ZFS at all if you don’t want complete protection? That’s just bizarre.
    - tmikaeld 9y ago
      This, same reason i don't understand why scaleway don't use ECC RAM on production servers. It's that important, I've seen corrupt RAM write bad data too many times and I don't even have thousands of servers...
    - empthought 9y ago
      No it’s not. I might want instant rollback on large databases on a development machine. Others might want transparent compression and send/receive on a small device. Neither has anything to do with “complete protection” yet both are easy to accomplish with ZFS. There are a whole slew of reasons to run ZFS outside of mass redundant storage with “complete protection.” The decision to use ECC or not has nothing to do with ZFS. You may as well ask someone who is building an ext4 file server machine whether they “used ECC RAM”; it’s just as relevant. Yet no one does that for EXT4 and they do it all the time for ZFS, because of one stupid post on the FreeNAS forums that has been roundly debunked a half-dozen times.
  - Fnoord 9y ago
    > Who puts ECC RAM in a small, low-power, embedded-style system like an RPi? It makes no sense. Well, you can't put it in a RPi or smartphone or Synology if it isn't there in the first place because its soldered. But if you build yourself a FreeNAS DIY or if you buy big iron for your company then why not. You still get other benefits from something like ZFS w/o ECC RAM though (imagine CoW; useful on pretty much any computer), but with less certainty.
    - empthought 9y ago

X86BSD 9y ago

Exactly. But it does work. I’m being down voted by the clueless brigade.

tmikaeld 9y ago
Maybe not all because of your points, but rather that HN is allergic to a preachy attitude. Try to stay objective while humble and it will work better.
jsjohnst 9y ago
As the other commenter stated, the downvotes are most likely due to the holier than though attitude. It’s ok to be passionate and knowledgeable, but nobody wants to deal with jerks.

Fnoord 9y ago

When we talk about relatively small amounts of RAM its not telling a lot how much RAM the device has but rather how much RAM is devoted to ZFS. Because an Android device on 1 GB RAM is a completely different beast than a FreeNAS devoted to serving files running 1 GB RAM. The same is true for 512 MB, 2 GB, etc. PS: And was it ECC RAM?

empthought 9y ago
> PS: And was it ECC RAM? This myth seriously needs to die. ZFS does not care one whit what kind of RAM you use, any more than my other type of filesystem does. Who puts ECC RAM in a small, low-power, embedded-style system like an RPi? It makes no sense.
- X86BSD 9y ago
  It makes sense to this degree only, if you DONT use ECC no matter where you are using ZFS you are introducing potential checksum errors in the data path. ECC is not that much more than normal ram. To me it makes no sense to run ZFS even if in some tiny home NAS and leave the data path vulnerable to corruption of any kind. Why bother with ZFS at all if you don’t want complete protection? That’s just bizarre.
  - tmikaeld 9y ago
    This, same reason i don't understand why scaleway don't use ECC RAM on production servers. It's that important, I've seen corrupt RAM write bad data too many times and I don't even have thousands of servers...
  - empthought 9y ago
    No it’s not. I might want instant rollback on large databases on a development machine. Others might want transparent compression and send/receive on a small device. Neither has anything to do with “complete protection” yet both are easy to accomplish with ZFS. There are a whole slew of reasons to run ZFS outside of mass redundant storage with “complete protection.” The decision to use ECC or not has nothing to do with ZFS. You may as well ask someone who is building an ext4 file server machine whether they “used ECC RAM”; it’s just as relevant. Yet no one does that for EXT4 and they do it all the time for ZFS, because of one stupid post on the FreeNAS forums that has been roundly debunked a half-dozen times.
- Fnoord 9y ago
  > Who puts ECC RAM in a small, low-power, embedded-style system like an RPi? It makes no sense. Well, you can't put it in a RPi or smartphone or Synology if it isn't there in the first place because its soldered. But if you build yourself a FreeNAS DIY or if you buy big iron for your company then why not. You still get other benefits from something like ZFS w/o ECC RAM though (imagine CoW; useful on pretty much any computer), but with less certainty.
  - empthought 9y ago