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Btrfs Has Saved Meta "Billions of Dollars" in Infrastructure Costs

51 points by breve 1y ago

ykonstant 1y ago
Darn. There is no discussion or elaboration on the specifics, just an offhand remark in an ongoing flamewar related to bcachefs :(
- integralid 1y ago
  There's entire 40 minute video linked (I didn't watch it yet).
  - kasabali 1y ago
    filler video
integralid 1y ago
Nice. This surely means they donated tens of millions to btrfs development.
- eqvinox 1y ago
  Meta employs a number of engineers working on the Btrfs file-system Maybe not tens of millions, but kernel fs engineers aren't exactly cheap either.
DiabloD3 1y ago
I honestly don't think Btrfs is ever going to take off. We're better off just making a clean room implementation of ZFS, and just go with the better technical solution. Meta, although morally bankrupt, _usually_ makes sane technical decisions. Backing Btrfs isn't one of them unless they plan on rewriting the whole thing from the ground up, and from what I've seen in the linked presentation, they're trying to rehab the worst data loss and performance bugs. They will never find them all.
- cowboylowrez 1y ago
  I think meta using btrfs is fine, their data isn't critical, heck I have never found a message of mine on facebook once its posted if the thread is above a certain size. At least now I can blame btrfs for the message's disappearance :-)
  - hxorr 1y ago
    Now that is an interesting point.
- crote 1y ago
  > I honestly don't think Btrfs is ever going to take off. Btrfs has taken off. It's the default filesystem for Fedora and openSUSE. It is being deployed at scale by billion-dollar enterprises. It is being used by a huge number of standalone NAS appliances, like those sold by Synology. If anything, you should be asking "Is ZFS ever going to take off?". The licensing issues are clearly a massive hurdle, so a cleanroom reimplementation is essentially a hard requirement for it to ever catch on. So why aren't we seeing people actively working on one? ZFS might have some technical details making it on paper better than Btrfs, but are its advantages enough to warrant an incredibly expensive full rewrite? Honestly, I doubt it.
  - _mlbt 1y ago
    Regarding ZFS licensing… > The Linux Kernel is licensed under the GNU General Public License Version 2 (GPLv2). While both (OpenZFS and Linux Kernel) are free open source licenses they are restrictive licenses. The combination of them causes problems because it prevents using pieces of code exclusively available under one license with pieces of code exclusively available under the other in the same binary. In the case of the Linux Kernel, this prevents us from distributing OpenZFS as part of the Linux Kernel binary. However, there is nothing in either license that prevents distributing it in the form of a binary module or in the form of source code. https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/License.html https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/License.html
  - DiabloD3 1y ago

51 points by breve 1y ago

Darn. There is no discussion or elaboration on the specifics, just an offhand remark in an ongoing flamewar related to bcachefs :(

integralid 1y ago
There's entire 40 minute video linked (I didn't watch it yet).
- kasabali 1y ago
  filler video

integralid 1y ago

Nice. This surely means they donated tens of millions to btrfs development.

eqvinox 1y ago
Meta employs a number of engineers working on the Btrfs file-system Maybe not tens of millions, but kernel fs engineers aren't exactly cheap either.

DiabloD3 1y ago

I honestly don't think Btrfs is ever going to take off. We're better off just making a clean room implementation of ZFS, and just go with the better technical solution. Meta, although morally bankrupt, _usually_ makes sane technical decisions. Backing Btrfs isn't one of them unless they plan on rewriting the whole thing from the ground up, and from what I've seen in the linked presentation, they're trying to rehab the worst data loss and performance bugs. They will never find them all.

cowboylowrez 1y ago
I think meta using btrfs is fine, their data isn't critical, heck I have never found a message of mine on facebook once its posted if the thread is above a certain size. At least now I can blame btrfs for the message's disappearance :-)
- hxorr 1y ago
  Now that is an interesting point.
crote 1y ago
> I honestly don't think Btrfs is ever going to take off. Btrfs has taken off. It's the default filesystem for Fedora and openSUSE. It is being deployed at scale by billion-dollar enterprises. It is being used by a huge number of standalone NAS appliances, like those sold by Synology. If anything, you should be asking "Is ZFS ever going to take off?". The licensing issues are clearly a massive hurdle, so a cleanroom reimplementation is essentially a hard requirement for it to ever catch on. So why aren't we seeing people actively working on one? ZFS might have some technical details making it on paper better than Btrfs, but are its advantages enough to warrant an incredibly expensive full rewrite? Honestly, I doubt it.
- _mlbt 1y ago
  Regarding ZFS licensing… > The Linux Kernel is licensed under the GNU General Public License Version 2 (GPLv2). While both (OpenZFS and Linux Kernel) are free open source licenses they are restrictive licenses. The combination of them causes problems because it prevents using pieces of code exclusively available under one license with pieces of code exclusively available under the other in the same binary. In the case of the Linux Kernel, this prevents us from distributing OpenZFS as part of the Linux Kernel binary. However, there is nothing in either license that prevents distributing it in the form of a binary module or in the form of source code. https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/License.html https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/License.html
- DiabloD3 1y ago