4 ms·

btrfs has many technical advantages over zfs

by kiney 1y ago

debazel 1y ago
Yes, like destroying itself and losing all data.
- natebc 1y ago
  ZFS is perfectly capable of this too. source: worked as a support engineer for a block storage company, witnessed hundreds of customers blowing one or both of their feet off with ZFS.
  - zenoprax 1y ago
    To what extent are these customers blaming the hammer for hitting their thumb? (Legitimate question: I manage several PB with ZFS and would like to know where I should be more cautious.)
    - nubinetwork 1y ago
      Pool feature mismatch on send receive, dedup send receive, new features breaking randomly on bleeding edge releases
      - TheNewsIsHere 1y ago
        The intent of feature flags in ZFS is to denote changes in on-disk structures. Replication isn’t supported between pools that don’t support the same flags because otherwise ZFS couldn’t read the data from disk properly on the receiving sides. There are workarounds, with their respective caveats and warnings.
    - natebc 1y ago
      A great deal. Which is why my cringe reflex still activates when I read about people running ZFS in places that aren't super tightly configured. ZFS is just such a massively complex piece of software. There were legitimate bugs in ZFS that we hit. Mostly around ZIL/SLOG and L2ARC and the umpteen million knobs that one can tweak.
      - TheNewsIsHere 1y ago
        Customers blowing off their feet with ZFS because they felt the need to tweak tunables they didn’t need to use, or didn’t properly understand, is not the fault of ZFS though. You can do the same with just about any file system. In the Windows world you can blow your feet off with NTFS configuration too. Of course there have been bugs, but every filesystem has had data-impacting bugs. Redundancy and backups are a critical caveat for all file systems for a reason. I once heard it said that “you can always afford to lose the data you don’t have backed up”. I do not think that broadly applies (such as with individuals), but it certainly applies in most business contexts.
        natebc 1y ago
        Yeah, my reaction to it usually that's so quickly recommended so frequently for general use. Obviously there's footguns in everything. Filesystem ones are just especially impactful.
        TheNewsIsHere 1y ago
        Yep. I use ZFS at home, but on business oriented NAS hardware with drives to match (generally). And I don’t go asking it to do odd things or configure it bizarrely. I don’t pass through drives named with Linux names (I prefer WWN to PCI address naming, at least at home). Etc. But a lot of people out there will slap a bunch of USB 2.0 hard drives on top of an old gaming computer. I’m all for experimenting, and I sympathize that it’s expensive to run ZFS on “ZFS class” platforms and hardware. I don’t begrudge others that. It would be really nice if there was something like ZFS that was a tad more flexibility and right in the kernel with consistent and concise user space tooling. Not everyone is comfortable with DKMS.
      - motorest 1y ago
        > A great deal. Which is why my cringe reflex (...) Can you provide some specifics? So far all I see is vague complains with no substance, and when complainers are lightly pressed they go defensive.
  - throw0101a 1y ago
    > source: worked as a support engineer for a block storage company, witnessed hundreds of customers blowing one or both of their feet off with ZFS. The phrasing of this tends me to believe that the customers set up ZFS in a 'strange' (?) way. Or was this a bug(s) with-in ZFS itself? Because when people talk about Btrfs issues, they are talking about the code itself and bugs that cause volumes to go AWOL and such. (All file systems have foot-guns.)
    - natebc 1y ago
      Mostly customers thinking they fully understand the thousands of parameters in ZFS. There was a _very_ nasty bug in the ZFS L2ARC that took out a few PB at a couple of large installations. This was back in 2012/2013 when multiple PBs was very expensive. Was a case of ZFS putting data from the ARC into the pool after the ZIL/SLOG had been flushed.
crest 1y ago
Can you give an example because to me it always appeared as NIH copy-cat fs?

btrfs has many technical advantages over zfs

by kiney 1y ago

btrfs has many technical advantages over zfs

debazel 1y ago

Yes, like destroying itself and losing all data.

natebc 1y ago
ZFS is perfectly capable of this too. source: worked as a support engineer for a block storage company, witnessed hundreds of customers blowing one or both of their feet off with ZFS.
- zenoprax 1y ago
  To what extent are these customers blaming the hammer for hitting their thumb? (Legitimate question: I manage several PB with ZFS and would like to know where I should be more cautious.)
  - nubinetwork 1y ago
    Pool feature mismatch on send receive, dedup send receive, new features breaking randomly on bleeding edge releases
    - TheNewsIsHere 1y ago
      The intent of feature flags in ZFS is to denote changes in on-disk structures. Replication isn’t supported between pools that don’t support the same flags because otherwise ZFS couldn’t read the data from disk properly on the receiving sides. There are workarounds, with their respective caveats and warnings.
  - natebc 1y ago
    A great deal. Which is why my cringe reflex still activates when I read about people running ZFS in places that aren't super tightly configured. ZFS is just such a massively complex piece of software. There were legitimate bugs in ZFS that we hit. Mostly around ZIL/SLOG and L2ARC and the umpteen million knobs that one can tweak.
    - TheNewsIsHere 1y ago
      Customers blowing off their feet with ZFS because they felt the need to tweak tunables they didn’t need to use, or didn’t properly understand, is not the fault of ZFS though. You can do the same with just about any file system. In the Windows world you can blow your feet off with NTFS configuration too. Of course there have been bugs, but every filesystem has had data-impacting bugs. Redundancy and backups are a critical caveat for all file systems for a reason. I once heard it said that “you can always afford to lose the data you don’t have backed up”. I do not think that broadly applies (such as with individuals), but it certainly applies in most business contexts.
      - natebc 1y ago
        Yeah, my reaction to it usually that's so quickly recommended so frequently for general use. Obviously there's footguns in everything. Filesystem ones are just especially impactful.
        TheNewsIsHere 1y ago
        Yep. I use ZFS at home, but on business oriented NAS hardware with drives to match (generally). And I don’t go asking it to do odd things or configure it bizarrely. I don’t pass through drives named with Linux names (I prefer WWN to PCI address naming, at least at home). Etc. But a lot of people out there will slap a bunch of USB 2.0 hard drives on top of an old gaming computer. I’m all for experimenting, and I sympathize that it’s expensive to run ZFS on “ZFS class” platforms and hardware. I don’t begrudge others that. It would be really nice if there was something like ZFS that was a tad more flexibility and right in the kernel with consistent and concise user space tooling. Not everyone is comfortable with DKMS.
    - motorest 1y ago
      > A great deal. Which is why my cringe reflex (...) Can you provide some specifics? So far all I see is vague complains with no substance, and when complainers are lightly pressed they go defensive.
- throw0101a 1y ago
  > source: worked as a support engineer for a block storage company, witnessed hundreds of customers blowing one or both of their feet off with ZFS. The phrasing of this tends me to believe that the customers set up ZFS in a 'strange' (?) way. Or was this a bug(s) with-in ZFS itself? Because when people talk about Btrfs issues, they are talking about the code itself and bugs that cause volumes to go AWOL and such. (All file systems have foot-guns.)
  - natebc 1y ago
    Mostly customers thinking they fully understand the thousands of parameters in ZFS. There was a _very_ nasty bug in the ZFS L2ARC that took out a few PB at a couple of large installations. This was back in 2012/2013 when multiple PBs was very expensive. Was a case of ZFS putting data from the ARC into the pool after the ZIL/SLOG had been flushed.

crest 1y ago

Can you give an example because to me it always appeared as NIH copy-cat fs?