3 ms·

How come this has "basic and advanced" (whatever that means ¿?) RAID 5/6, while BTRFS itself doesn't? (https://btrfs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/btrfs-man5.html#ra

How come this has "basic and advanced" (whatever that means ¿?) RAID 5/6, while BTRFS itself doesn't? (https://btrfs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/btrfs-man5.html#raid56-status-and-recommended-practices https://btrfs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/btrfs-man5.html#raid5...)

gerdesj 3y ago
[flagged]
dark-star 3y ago
They call RAID0/1/10 "basic" RAID and RAID5/6 "advanced" RAID. I have no idea why. Maybe because the former doesn't require "advanced" parity calculations or something.
viraptor 3y ago
That's not quite right. Linux btrfs supports raid5 in general, but has known edge cases which make it not safe to use. Basically it's "available, but experimental, for developers only". Winbtrfs only says the raid5 mode is one of the features, but doesn't really address how well it works. The questions in a related issue (https://github.com/maharmstone/btrfs/issues/293 https://github.com/maharmstone/btrfs/issues/293) have been closed without real answers. I wouldn't risk raid 5/6 on it without getting good answers about the status / testing from the developers first.
- hsbauauvhabzb 3y ago
  I was under the impression that brtfs didn’t support raid, but could be deployed on top of software raid?
  - _flux 3y ago
    Well, that's the wrong impression. Here's some Arch documentation about it, basically you just create a btrfs on top of multiple devices and it works (to some extent with raid5/raid6 as well): https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Btrfs#Multi-device_file_system https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Btrfs#Multi-device_file_sys... . Raid1 apparently works fine. So if you want raid5/6, deploying on top of md is the better option.
- hnlmorg 3y ago
  I wouldn’t risk this Windows driver on anything important regardless of whether you use raid 5/6 or not. I’m not taking anything away from the effort that has gone into producing this. Just being realistic about the amount of effort that is required to create a production ready file system driver.
- cesarb 3y ago
  > Linux btrfs supports raid5 in general, but has known edge cases which make it not safe to use. Basically it's "available, but experimental, for developers only". I recall reading somewhere recently, that the Linux btrfs developer intends to fix these edge cases through a on-disk layout change (IIRC, adding one more btree to the filesystem). So unless this driver already has that on-disk layout change, it's unlikely that these edge cases have been addressed.

gerdesj 3y ago

[flagged]

dark-star 3y ago

They call RAID0/1/10 "basic" RAID and RAID5/6 "advanced" RAID. I have no idea why. Maybe because the former doesn't require "advanced" parity calculations or something.

viraptor 3y ago

That's not quite right. Linux btrfs supports raid5 in general, but has known edge cases which make it not safe to use. Basically it's "available, but experimental, for developers only". Winbtrfs only says the raid5 mode is one of the features, but doesn't really address how well it works. The questions in a related issue (https://github.com/maharmstone/btrfs/issues/293 https://github.com/maharmstone/btrfs/issues/293) have been closed without real answers. I wouldn't risk raid 5/6 on it without getting good answers about the status / testing from the developers first.

hsbauauvhabzb 3y ago
I was under the impression that brtfs didn’t support raid, but could be deployed on top of software raid?
- _flux 3y ago
  Well, that's the wrong impression. Here's some Arch documentation about it, basically you just create a btrfs on top of multiple devices and it works (to some extent with raid5/raid6 as well): https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Btrfs#Multi-device_file_system https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Btrfs#Multi-device_file_sys... . Raid1 apparently works fine. So if you want raid5/6, deploying on top of md is the better option.
hnlmorg 3y ago
I wouldn’t risk this Windows driver on anything important regardless of whether you use raid 5/6 or not. I’m not taking anything away from the effort that has gone into producing this. Just being realistic about the amount of effort that is required to create a production ready file system driver.
cesarb 3y ago
> Linux btrfs supports raid5 in general, but has known edge cases which make it not safe to use. Basically it's "available, but experimental, for developers only". I recall reading somewhere recently, that the Linux btrfs developer intends to fix these edge cases through a on-disk layout change (IIRC, adding one more btree to the filesystem). So unless this driver already has that on-disk layout change, it's unlikely that these edge cases have been addressed.