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832 TB – ZFS on Linux

jonkensy.com

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Re: 832 TB – ZFS on Linux

#21

Post by notpeter »

4ad wrote: post #2

you can run ZFS on Ubuntu [...] You could also build this on Solaris with necessary licensing if you wanted to that route but it’d be more expensive. I find it bewildering the author didn't even consider illumos or FreeBSD, where ZFS is a first class citizen.

It's likely a human resources problem. For every competent FreeBSD or Illumos sysadmin there are 10x equally experienced with Linux. And those numbers are much worse outside of major cities. The commercial support from Ubuntu tips the scales.

I made this same decision at my last job. I ran Solaris and Illumos on our file servers and loved it, but a year before I left I ported all the pools to Ubuntu so my successor only needed to be Linux competent and ZFS trainable.

Sometimes when choosing tech it's not what's technologically superior solution nor what you personally could run well, it's what's best for your coworkers, your successor and the organization in the long term.

Re: 832 TB – ZFS on Linux

#22

Post by linker3000 »

rsync wrote: post #13
dsl wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you say what vendor you are using now?

Well, our vendor continues to be IX Systems (for the most part). However, instead of buying exclusively supermicro from them, we are now buying these Hitachi 60bay JBODs: http://www.hgst.com/products/platforms/4U60G2-storage-platfo... It really bugs that supermicro went this way. They used to be a very boring company that did nothing but build great chassis. I used to jokingly say that "supermicro is the rsync.net of…

Those are HGST parts.

Hitachi is NOT HGST.

/Pet peeve

//Used to work for HGST alongside the EMEA 4U60 team, so perhaps a bit sensitive!

///Was often asked to help move the damn things on/off trolleys when the fully-loaded demo units came back for refresh before going out again - it was a 4-person lift with under-unit webbed straps - I'm sure my spine was compressed and I left the job a couple of cm shorter!

Re: 832 TB – ZFS on Linux

#24

Post by tylerjl »

sandGorgon wrote: post #18

The most important line for me was "Today, you can run ZFS on Ubuntu 16.0.4.2 LTS with standard repositories and Canonical’s Ubuntu Advantage Advanced Support. That makes the decision easy." Its highly interesting that Canonical does this with ZFS. I'm not sure why they dont market this more.

I'm only a casual user of ZFS on Linux for personal storage projects, but I've spoken with people who rely very heavily on ZFS on Linux for their small businesses, and it's interesting to hear their perspectives on this. Essentially, because btrfs has failed to deliver on the next-gen filesystem front, ZFS on Linux is such a critical piece of technology that unless Red Hat has an answer soon for out-of-the-box ZFS on Linux, Canonical has a pretty staggering advantage. One theory is that Canonical has essentially forced Oracle to decide whether it wants to crack down on inclusion of CDDL-licensed code being shipped with Ubuntu's stock kernel, so Red Hat may be waiting to see if Oracle sweeps in or not before following suit.

I'd be very surprised if RHEL (by observing the progression of Fedora development) continues to bet on btrfs, as I have yet to encounter anyone (including myself) who would ever trust btrfs over ZFS on Linux with anything of importance based on their experiences with the two - my experience is anecdotal, but ZFS has been just as reliable on *BSD as with any Linux distribution.

Re: 832 TB – ZFS on Linux

#26

Post by majormjr »

tylerjl wrote: post #24
sandGorgon wrote: post #18

The most important line for me was "Today, you can run ZFS on Ubuntu 16.0.4.2 LTS with standard repositories and Canonical’s Ubuntu Advantage Advanced Support. That makes the decision easy." Its highly interesting that Canonical does this with ZFS. I'm not sure why they dont market this more.

I'm only a casual user of ZFS on Linux for personal storage projects, but I've spoken with people who rely very heavily on ZFS on Linux for their small businesses, and it's interesting to hear their perspectives on this. Essentially, because btrfs has failed to deliver on the next-gen filesystem front, ZFS on Linux is such a critical piece of technology that unless Red Hat has an answer soon for out-of-the-box ZFS on…

btrfs is getting dropped from future versions of RHEL so you can see what Red Hat thinks of the future of btrfs.

Re: 832 TB – ZFS on Linux

#28

Post by user5994461 »

majormjr wrote: post #26
tylerjl wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm only a casual user of ZFS on Linux for personal storage projects, but I've spoken with people who rely very heavily on ZFS on Linux for their small businesses, and it's interesting to hear their perspectives on this. Essentially, because btrfs has failed to deliver on the next-gen filesystem front, ZFS on Linux is such a critical piece of technology that unless Red Hat has an answer soon for out-of-the-box ZFS on…

btrfs is getting dropped from future versions of RHEL so you can see what Red Hat thinks of the future of btrfs.

RedHat is betting on xfs.

Re: 832 TB – ZFS on Linux

#29

Post by comboy »

jaytaylor wrote: post #27

What about cooling? Will the lifespan of the high-capacity platter-dense hard drives be drastically reduced by clumping them together like that with what looks like little airflow?

AFAIR from the backblaze blog, a bigger issue that shortens the lifespan is vibration.

Re: 832 TB – ZFS on Linux

#30

Post by georgyo »

tylerjl wrote: post #24
sandGorgon wrote: post #18

The most important line for me was "Today, you can run ZFS on Ubuntu 16.0.4.2 LTS with standard repositories and Canonical’s Ubuntu Advantage Advanced Support. That makes the decision easy." Its highly interesting that Canonical does this with ZFS. I'm not sure why they dont market this more.

I'm only a casual user of ZFS on Linux for personal storage projects, but I've spoken with people who rely very heavily on ZFS on Linux for their small businesses, and it's interesting to hear their perspectives on this. Essentially, because btrfs has failed to deliver on the next-gen filesystem front, ZFS on Linux is such a critical piece of technology that unless Red Hat has an answer soon for out-of-the-box ZFS on…

Oracle is not the one that could sue. There is nothing in the CDDL that prevents it being used else where.

The GPL on the other hand is a strong copy left. If you link against GPL code, your code must also be licensed as GPL.

This means the Linux copyright owners could sue the distributers of ZoL binaries, but Oracle could not.

Oracle has the power to allow their ZFS code to be relicensed as GPL, removing this road block, but they have no incentive to do so.

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