4 ms·

A lot of end users run ZFS through TrueNAS/FreeNAS and I indeed found that community to spread a lot of misinfo and un-actionable advice. I liken them to gamers

A lot of end users run ZFS through TrueNAS/FreeNAS and I indeed found that community to spread a lot of misinfo and un-actionable advice. I liken them to gamers lapping up any snake oil solution to get 0.1 fps more. I would suggest anyone trying to learn about ZFS to avoid it, it definitely was counter-productive to me. Reddit, random blogs and official documentation (often that by Oracle) turned out to be much better resources.

favorited 3y ago
I think it comes down to the fact that the TrueNAS developers treat it as an appliance (which is a good thing, IMO). However, because so many people's only experience with ZFS is TrueNAS, when iXsystems says "Doing X on TrueNAS is a bad idea, that's not a configuration we support," it gets cargo culted as "doing X on ZFS is bad."
bpbp-mango 3y ago
Using it through something like TrueNAS with sensible defaults is probably a better idea for the average person than trying to roll their own deployment, no?
- angus-prune 3y ago
  Im not sure running TrueNAS counts as learning ZFS, which I think is GP's point. If you want to use ZFS, then TrueNAS with sensible defaults is a great way to go. If you want to learn ZFS enough to roll your own deployment, change the configuration correctly and understand the changes you make then don't start with TrueNAS, and definitely don't listen to the TrueNAS community. Or at least, that's how I read the GP comment.
  - donmcronald 3y ago
    > If you want to use ZFS, then TrueNAS with sensible defaults is a great way to go. I evaluated TrueNAS Scale about 6 months ago and bailed on it very quickly. My install with their "sensible defaults" ended up having swap partitions on all my spinning disks. That alone was enough for me to decide against using it. One bad choice likely means other bad choices in my experience. They also trampled / reset my 'zfs_zrc_max' tunable every time a VM got started (I think) and it wasn't obvious what was doing it. I didn't think there was any value in learning the quirks of TrueNAS over doing a setup from scratch, so I ended up going with Ubuntu LTS and doing all my own config / testing.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    I mean, pretty much if you want to learn anything you're going to have to put a lot of time into it. With ZFS it will be building different servers with different disk layouts and figuring out how to test and benchmark those options. Which just takes an absolutely massive amount of time. I know, I was doing just that 5+ years ago. Commercial storage vendors aren't really any different. Mostly the biggest difference here is they offer a very limited subset of hardware and disk configurations and tend to iterate over that very small configuration space. Step outside of that config space and they won't have much insight. This remind me of the earlier days of Mac vs PC. Mac tended to have a very small hardware set of supported devices, and in many ways helped stability. PC supported pretty much anything you threw at it, which commonly had issues with crappy drivers and untested interactions.
withinboredom 3y ago
Reminds me of a game (MMO) I play on the weekends. Any time someone new joins, they always ask how come frame rates are so low. Then we begin the ”set your graphic settings to high” conversation. They immediately say we are full of shit. It’s already set to low and getting 10 fps. Eventually, someone explains: “just try it, or stop complaining.” 30s later, they exclaim: “holy ** I’m getting 60 fps now!” Sometimes, what looks like misinformation isn’t misinformation. TL;DR: this game switches to a software rendering pipeline on “medium” or lower. You have to set it on “high” to switch to the hardware rendering pipeline.
- jeegsy 3y ago
  Wow! Thats a great story
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago
  Is that a visible option somewhere or do you only have one setting, the preset?
  - withinboredom 3y ago
    The preset is the only way to influence it.

favorited 3y ago

I think it comes down to the fact that the TrueNAS developers treat it as an appliance (which is a good thing, IMO). However, because so many people's only experience with ZFS is TrueNAS, when iXsystems says "Doing X on TrueNAS is a bad idea, that's not a configuration we support," it gets cargo culted as "doing X on ZFS is bad."

bpbp-mango 3y ago

Using it through something like TrueNAS with sensible defaults is probably a better idea for the average person than trying to roll their own deployment, no?

angus-prune 3y ago
Im not sure running TrueNAS counts as learning ZFS, which I think is GP's point. If you want to use ZFS, then TrueNAS with sensible defaults is a great way to go. If you want to learn ZFS enough to roll your own deployment, change the configuration correctly and understand the changes you make then don't start with TrueNAS, and definitely don't listen to the TrueNAS community. Or at least, that's how I read the GP comment.
- donmcronald 3y ago
  > If you want to use ZFS, then TrueNAS with sensible defaults is a great way to go. I evaluated TrueNAS Scale about 6 months ago and bailed on it very quickly. My install with their "sensible defaults" ended up having swap partitions on all my spinning disks. That alone was enough for me to decide against using it. One bad choice likely means other bad choices in my experience. They also trampled / reset my 'zfs_zrc_max' tunable every time a VM got started (I think) and it wasn't obvious what was doing it. I didn't think there was any value in learning the quirks of TrueNAS over doing a setup from scratch, so I ended up going with Ubuntu LTS and doing all my own config / testing.
- pixl97 3y ago
  I mean, pretty much if you want to learn anything you're going to have to put a lot of time into it. With ZFS it will be building different servers with different disk layouts and figuring out how to test and benchmark those options. Which just takes an absolutely massive amount of time. I know, I was doing just that 5+ years ago. Commercial storage vendors aren't really any different. Mostly the biggest difference here is they offer a very limited subset of hardware and disk configurations and tend to iterate over that very small configuration space. Step outside of that config space and they won't have much insight. This remind me of the earlier days of Mac vs PC. Mac tended to have a very small hardware set of supported devices, and in many ways helped stability. PC supported pretty much anything you threw at it, which commonly had issues with crappy drivers and untested interactions.

withinboredom 3y ago

Reminds me of a game (MMO) I play on the weekends. Any time someone new joins, they always ask how come frame rates are so low. Then we begin the ”set your graphic settings to high” conversation. They immediately say we are full of shit. It’s already set to low and getting 10 fps. Eventually, someone explains: “just try it, or stop complaining.” 30s later, they exclaim: “holy ** I’m getting 60 fps now!” Sometimes, what looks like misinformation isn’t misinformation. TL;DR: this game switches to a software rendering pipeline on “medium” or lower. You have to set it on “high” to switch to the hardware rendering pipeline.

jeegsy 3y ago
Wow! Thats a great story
Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago
Is that a visible option somewhere or do you only have one setting, the preset?
- withinboredom 3y ago
  The preset is the only way to influence it.