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This is very one-sided, and I agree with most of the commenters in that thread calling the original poster out. About half the bad/ugly points about ZFS simply

by dmpk2k 12y ago

This is very one-sided, and I agree with most of the commenters in that thread calling the original poster out. About half the bad/ugly points about ZFS simply aren't true. But there is one crucial feature ZFS has, which wasn't explicitly mentioned. The only feature that really matters: ZFS has been in production use for a nearly decade. On hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of servers. It has bled. Putting on my sysadmin hat, that original poster just makes me wince. Of all the problems to deal with in production, problems caused by untested filesystems is down at the bottom of what I'd like to wake up to.

PhantomGremlin 12y ago
> ZFS has been in production use for a nearly decade. The problem is that it's been about 4 years since any OpenSolaris source was released by Oracle. Since then, as a casual observer, I've seen mostly promises and fragmentation. It's not like the old days when Sun was the "one true steward" that drove ZFS development and fixed all the bugs. If ZFS isn't "dead" or at least on life support, then tell me which distribution should I use? In the old days it was simple, either Solaris (stable, supported by Sun) or OpenSolaris (the leading edge). But now? You can't answer "it depends" on what I'm doing with it, because that just proves that ZFS is nothing but fragmentation at this point. It would be nice if OpenZFS could take the mantle and run with it. But the original poster raises some good questions. E.g.: If OpenZFS is a future what is their tier one development platform? illumos , FreeBSD, or God forbid Linux on which ZFS feels very awkward?
- dmpk2k 12y ago
  Use FreeBSD or illumos. Increasingly Linux is a fine option too. OpenZFS is the mantle. It's the umbrella for ZFS projects across operating systems: http://open-zfs.org/wiki/Contributors http://open-zfs.org/wiki/Contributors Dead it is not: http://open-zfs.org/wiki/Features http://open-zfs.org/wiki/Features Indeed, there is some fragmentation, but that's being cleaned up thanks to the OpenZFS initiative. Why does OpenZFS need a "tier one" development platform? Historically illumos lead the way, but I rather think a cross-platform filesystem is more useful than one limited to a single OS. In any case, none of this changes that ZFS has been in widespread production use for nearly a decade. HAMMER? Right.
  - rodgerd 12y ago
    If you're going to argue we can trust ZFS because it's been in production use for a decade, it's shittily disingenious to try and paper over the fact that OpenZFS is a fork that diverged from upstream 4 years ago - almost half that timespan. And where is the development effort from that "10 years" going?
    - bcantrill 12y ago
      We run ZFS -- specifically, OpenZFS -- in production across all of our datacenters, as do our private cloud customers in theirs. We use it for everything including (notably) our Manta storage service.[1] There is nothing disingenuous in claiming that ZFS (OpenZFS!) has been in production use for a decade! [1] http://open-zfs.org/w/images/0/03/Manta-Dave_Pacheco.pdf http://open-zfs.org/w/images/0/03/Manta-Dave_Pacheco.pdf
      - PhantomGremlin 12y ago
        That link doesn't inspire confidence, for two different reasons: 1) open-zfs.org points to 4 separate operating systems that support ZFS. To wit: illumos, FreeBSD, ZFS on Linux, OpenZFS on OS X. So what about all the other distributions out there, e.g. OpenIndiana? Like I said: Fragmentation. What are the odds that any two of the plethora of distributions are using the same ZFS bits? Which bugs are fixed in which distribution? Which post-Sun features are enabled in which distribution? 2) The PDF mentions ZFS panics and disk corruption, "a dark time" about a year ago. Fortuitously "Matt Ahrens and George Wilson diagnosed the problem". Great! One of the inventors of ZFS and one of the ZFS tech leads from Sun were available. But what about if the average user has a problem? Maybe you can give us Matt's phone number? Is he available for pro bono consulting when Joe Sixpack has a problem? I'd love to believe in ZFS. But it seems to me that, right now, it's only usable when supported by a big player. It's probably great if I go to Joyent and sign up for the Manta Storage Service. But if I have a problem while using ZFS in FreeBSD or in Linux, my only recourse would be to start whining on mailing lists.
        12y ago

by dmpk2k 12y ago

PhantomGremlin 12y ago

> ZFS has been in production use for a nearly decade. The problem is that it's been about 4 years since any OpenSolaris source was released by Oracle. Since then, as a casual observer, I've seen mostly promises and fragmentation. It's not like the old days when Sun was the "one true steward" that drove ZFS development and fixed all the bugs. If ZFS isn't "dead" or at least on life support, then tell me which distribution should I use? In the old days it was simple, either Solaris (stable, supported by Sun) or OpenSolaris (the leading edge). But now? You can't answer "it depends" on what I'm doing with it, because that just proves that ZFS is nothing but fragmentation at this point. It would be nice if OpenZFS could take the mantle and run with it. But the original poster raises some good questions. E.g.: If OpenZFS is a future what is their tier one development platform? illumos , FreeBSD, or God forbid Linux on which ZFS feels very awkward?

dmpk2k 12y ago
Use FreeBSD or illumos. Increasingly Linux is a fine option too. OpenZFS is the mantle. It's the umbrella for ZFS projects across operating systems: http://open-zfs.org/wiki/Contributors http://open-zfs.org/wiki/Contributors Dead it is not: http://open-zfs.org/wiki/Features http://open-zfs.org/wiki/Features Indeed, there is some fragmentation, but that's being cleaned up thanks to the OpenZFS initiative. Why does OpenZFS need a "tier one" development platform? Historically illumos lead the way, but I rather think a cross-platform filesystem is more useful than one limited to a single OS. In any case, none of this changes that ZFS has been in widespread production use for nearly a decade. HAMMER? Right.
- rodgerd 12y ago
  If you're going to argue we can trust ZFS because it's been in production use for a decade, it's shittily disingenious to try and paper over the fact that OpenZFS is a fork that diverged from upstream 4 years ago - almost half that timespan. And where is the development effort from that "10 years" going?
  - bcantrill 12y ago
    We run ZFS -- specifically, OpenZFS -- in production across all of our datacenters, as do our private cloud customers in theirs. We use it for everything including (notably) our Manta storage service.[1] There is nothing disingenuous in claiming that ZFS (OpenZFS!) has been in production use for a decade! [1] http://open-zfs.org/w/images/0/03/Manta-Dave_Pacheco.pdf http://open-zfs.org/w/images/0/03/Manta-Dave_Pacheco.pdf
    - PhantomGremlin 12y ago
      That link doesn't inspire confidence, for two different reasons: 1) open-zfs.org points to 4 separate operating systems that support ZFS. To wit: illumos, FreeBSD, ZFS on Linux, OpenZFS on OS X. So what about all the other distributions out there, e.g. OpenIndiana? Like I said: Fragmentation. What are the odds that any two of the plethora of distributions are using the same ZFS bits? Which bugs are fixed in which distribution? Which post-Sun features are enabled in which distribution? 2) The PDF mentions ZFS panics and disk corruption, "a dark time" about a year ago. Fortuitously "Matt Ahrens and George Wilson diagnosed the problem". Great! One of the inventors of ZFS and one of the ZFS tech leads from Sun were available. But what about if the average user has a problem? Maybe you can give us Matt's phone number? Is he available for pro bono consulting when Joe Sixpack has a problem? I'd love to believe in ZFS. But it seems to me that, right now, it's only usable when supported by a big player. It's probably great if I go to Joyent and sign up for the Manta Storage Service. But if I have a problem while using ZFS in FreeBSD or in Linux, my only recourse would be to start whining on mailing lists.
      - 12y ago