6 ms·

Curious to learn, what are the differentiators of ZFS? File system seems like an invisible layer to me personally which makes me ask this question.

nextos 4y ago
Snapshots and device pools are my favorites. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS#Features https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS#Features I use snapshots for personal backups, but on BTFS, and it's amazingly simple. 2 LOC: Rsync home to drive and make snapshot.
- behnamoh 4y ago
  is BTFS production ready? as in, is it stable these days?
  - number6 4y ago
    I am using it for years and ceased to run into problems about 3 years ago. Production ready as in building a business on it. I would not. Storing your personal important stuff (and have backups in place): yes. Unimportant personal stuff: also very much yes.
  - happymellon 4y ago
    BTRFS has been stable for a while, except for RAID 5/6. However you can use RAID 1 for all intents as RAID 1 provides essentially RAID 5/6 and is much more flexible. With BTRFS RAID 1 you can set the number of drives, and the number of duplicate data, and can use mixed sized drives. Due to this, I would recommend RAID 1 over RAID 5/6 anyway even if RAID 5/6 was fine.
sleepycatgirl 4y ago
Well, ZFS way of managing disks is really comfy to me, and, The way datasets and snapshots work, let me have really space efficient game modding. I wrote a bit more about this on my extremely simple blog https://sleepycatgirl.github.io/html/zfs.html https://sleepycatgirl.github.io/html/zfs.html
- geek_at 4y ago
  Interesting read, thanks
paulmd 4y ago
zero-copy snapshots, end-to-end validation of writes and checksummable data integrity, built-in logical/physical device management, and a very intelligent caching layer that uses spare RAM to handle MRU/MFU for both filesystem metadata and the data itself. Along with a track record of being generally reliable and stable, under intense commercial workloads.
- sleepycatgirl 4y ago
  Yeah... While I don't make use of some things (Like, I only have 1HDD, 1SDD (I do plan to change that once I will be building new PC though), so no RAID-Z for me, still, the way datasets work, made things painless (I mean, I can finally have separate / partition by simply making dataset, but not waste space from having separate partition with conventional filesystem, and this just works)) but still, on the desktop, it is a very pleasant experience. Though, there is still a lot for me to learn about ZFS (Stuff like L2ARC, SLOG and such) but that is fine, those things will come with time =w=

nextos 4y ago

Snapshots and device pools are my favorites. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS#Features https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS#Features I use snapshots for personal backups, but on BTFS, and it's amazingly simple. 2 LOC: Rsync home to drive and make snapshot.

behnamoh 4y ago
is BTFS production ready? as in, is it stable these days?
- number6 4y ago
  I am using it for years and ceased to run into problems about 3 years ago. Production ready as in building a business on it. I would not. Storing your personal important stuff (and have backups in place): yes. Unimportant personal stuff: also very much yes.
- happymellon 4y ago
  BTRFS has been stable for a while, except for RAID 5/6. However you can use RAID 1 for all intents as RAID 1 provides essentially RAID 5/6 and is much more flexible. With BTRFS RAID 1 you can set the number of drives, and the number of duplicate data, and can use mixed sized drives. Due to this, I would recommend RAID 1 over RAID 5/6 anyway even if RAID 5/6 was fine.

sleepycatgirl 4y ago

Well, ZFS way of managing disks is really comfy to me, and, The way datasets and snapshots work, let me have really space efficient game modding. I wrote a bit more about this on my extremely simple blog https://sleepycatgirl.github.io/html/zfs.html https://sleepycatgirl.github.io/html/zfs.html

geek_at 4y ago
Interesting read, thanks

paulmd 4y ago

zero-copy snapshots, end-to-end validation of writes and checksummable data integrity, built-in logical/physical device management, and a very intelligent caching layer that uses spare RAM to handle MRU/MFU for both filesystem metadata and the data itself. Along with a track record of being generally reliable and stable, under intense commercial workloads.

sleepycatgirl 4y ago
Yeah... While I don't make use of some things (Like, I only have 1HDD, 1SDD (I do plan to change that once I will be building new PC though), so no RAID-Z for me, still, the way datasets work, made things painless (I mean, I can finally have separate / partition by simply making dataset, but not waste space from having separate partition with conventional filesystem, and this just works)) but still, on the desktop, it is a very pleasant experience. Though, there is still a lot for me to learn about ZFS (Stuff like L2ARC, SLOG and such) but that is fine, those things will come with time =w=