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Yeah, I think Sun/Oracle recognized that there was a subset of their user base that would greatly benefit from BPR and all the associated features that come fro

Yeah, I think Sun/Oracle recognized that there was a subset of their user base that would greatly benefit from BPR and all the associated features that come from it, but that it wasn't their core customers, so it wasn't included in the initial implementation (in my experience, most enterprise customers would rather replace an entire array that was full than expand or reshape it.) Had Sun remained the powerhouse it was, the BPR would probably probably have eventually gotten done, but with the smaller resources devoted to ZFS development now vs in the Sun days, it's gotten kicked way down the priority list.

toast0 7y ago
Enterprise users are most often using enterprise servers with fancy built in disk enclosures, and they're likely to fill those up with disks. Expanding the storage by replacing with higher capacity disks makes sense; expanding by using more disks isn't as likely. And changing the configuration to have fewer disks is also less likely; you paid for all those slots, so they're going to be filled.
- gravitas 7y ago
  Enterprise users are most often using enterprise servers with fiber HBAs and SAN.
- tjoff 7y ago
  > Expanding the storage by replacing with higher capacity disks makes sense That is an insanely time consuming operation that also increases the risk of data loss as you have less redundancy during the expansion. An enterprise ought to just migrate the entire pool/content to somewhere else and redo it completely. Expanding by replacing with higher capacity drives just feels like a hack and afterthought that only hobbyists would actually make use of.
  - the8472 7y ago
    > as you have less redundancy during the expansion. If the old device is not faulty then the replace operation will keep both old and new in the array until it is complete. > An enterprise ought to just migrate the entire pool/content to somewhere else and redo it completely. That's also an option with send/receive, but that involves downtime. Drive replacements can be done on a live system. Server grade hardware generally supports hotplug.
    - hinkley 7y ago
      If you left one bay empty, that is. Which you probably should.
      - the8472 7y ago
        you can run the replace to some form of external drive and then swap the physical drive once the replace is done.
- stock_toaster 7y ago
  Or growing by adding a whole additional DAS full of disks, and yes... zfs supports adding vdevs to pools. So if you have a 6disk raidz2, you can append another 6disk raidz2 to it to "grow" your pool. More commonly though, is probably adding new raid1 pairs to a raid10.
- tw04 7y ago
  This was true when a tray of disk was 10s of thousands of dollars. In the world of 32TB SSDs that are tens of thousands of dollars for a single disk, not so much. As drives have gotten larger, the need to add only a handful of drives to an existing RAID set has become a desirable feature even for enterprises.

toast0 7y ago

Enterprise users are most often using enterprise servers with fancy built in disk enclosures, and they're likely to fill those up with disks. Expanding the storage by replacing with higher capacity disks makes sense; expanding by using more disks isn't as likely. And changing the configuration to have fewer disks is also less likely; you paid for all those slots, so they're going to be filled.

gravitas 7y ago
Enterprise users are most often using enterprise servers with fiber HBAs and SAN.
tjoff 7y ago
> Expanding the storage by replacing with higher capacity disks makes sense That is an insanely time consuming operation that also increases the risk of data loss as you have less redundancy during the expansion. An enterprise ought to just migrate the entire pool/content to somewhere else and redo it completely. Expanding by replacing with higher capacity drives just feels like a hack and afterthought that only hobbyists would actually make use of.
- the8472 7y ago
  > as you have less redundancy during the expansion. If the old device is not faulty then the replace operation will keep both old and new in the array until it is complete. > An enterprise ought to just migrate the entire pool/content to somewhere else and redo it completely. That's also an option with send/receive, but that involves downtime. Drive replacements can be done on a live system. Server grade hardware generally supports hotplug.
  - hinkley 7y ago
    If you left one bay empty, that is. Which you probably should.
    - the8472 7y ago
      you can run the replace to some form of external drive and then swap the physical drive once the replace is done.
stock_toaster 7y ago
Or growing by adding a whole additional DAS full of disks, and yes... zfs supports adding vdevs to pools. So if you have a 6disk raidz2, you can append another 6disk raidz2 to it to "grow" your pool. More commonly though, is probably adding new raid1 pairs to a raid10.
tw04 7y ago
This was true when a tray of disk was 10s of thousands of dollars. In the world of 32TB SSDs that are tens of thousands of dollars for a single disk, not so much. As drives have gotten larger, the need to add only a handful of drives to an existing RAID set has become a desirable feature even for enterprises.