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832 TB – ZFS on Linux

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Re: 832 TB – ZFS on Linux

#41

Post by gribbly »

georgyo wrote: post #30
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…

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 b…

As I understand it, the license incompability between GPL and CDDL is that CDDL adds a restriction regarding patents, and GPL does not allow for additional restrictions to be added.

So to distribute CDDL licensed code is a breach of BOTH licenses as I see it, ignoring the 'patent peace' requirement of CDDL which would be the case if distributing it as GPL does not sound legal to me (IANAL).

I can certainly understand why Linus has stated that no CDDL code will be mainlined (brought into the Linux kernel tree), it all seems very ambiguous.

Re: 832 TB – ZFS on Linux

#42

Post by gribbly »

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.

Red Hat has never spent any real resources on btrfs, they've been all about XFS when it comes to enterprise needs.

Re: 832 TB – ZFS on Linux

#43

Post by rdeckard0104 »

notpeter wrote: post #21
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 o…

I disagree.

FreeBSD is just as easy to administer as Linux. Solaris I find to be a bit more challenging. I can appreciate your commentary, but I challenge you to prove me wrong. Just for some color I've ran the Gambit of Unix and Linux systems in my career with FreeBSD being one of the easiest and most consistent out of the box technologies. Solaris had already been quite the opposite. I guess you could say AIX is a close second to Solaris, but I think that's a bit of a grey area considering how opinionated that operating system is.

To be clear I'm not a FreeBSD zealot. I'm for what works. Right now what works is the emerging container based solutions albeit not relevant to this discussion.

Re: 832 TB – ZFS on Linux

#44

Post by gribbly »

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…

>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

Huh? Are Canonical is shipping ZFS in their kernel now ? I thought they just distributed it as a separate module.

Re: 832 TB – ZFS on Linux

#45

Post by cmurf »

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…

SUSE has succeeded in shipping atomic OS updates and rollbacks by default both for enterprise and community versions of Linux several years ago. Facebook is using it, and the usage is growing. [1] And there are any number of examples of production usage of Btrfs at scale if you go look for them. [2] And the good and bad are fairly well understood, it is in fact getting better and will continue to get better.[3] And Red Hat isn't waiting. [4]

[1] https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-btrfs/msg67885.html [2] https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-btrfs/msg67308.html [3] https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-btrfs/msg67940.html

[4] https://stratis-storage.github.io/StratisSoftwareDesign.pdf

What you're going to find in storage is that there are multiple valid approaches, no clear one size fits all winner, and people will choose based on the tools they're familiar with, the company they trust, and their use case. I pick Btrfs over ZFS pretty much based on equivalent trust and better flexibility for my use case, but then I'm much more familiar with Btrfs tools and where the bodies are buried than I am with ZFS. I don't need to go around impugning other projects to justify what I use.

Re: 832 TB – ZFS on Linux

#46

Post by lottin »

georgyo wrote: post #30
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…

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 b…

According to the Software Freedom Conservancy

...redistributing a binary work incorporating CDDLv1'd and GPLv2'd copyrighted portions constitutes copyright infringement in both directions... [https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/feb/25/zfs-and-linux/]

so it seems that Oracle could in fact sue.

Re: 832 TB – ZFS on Linux

#47

Post by ethbro »

gribbly wrote: post #44
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…

>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 Huh? Are Canonical is shipping ZFS in their kernel now ? I thought they just distributed it as a separate module.

There was an article a bit ago on HN where the Free Software Conservancy (?) wrote that legally, shipping a precompiled binary kernel module is the same as having it in the kernel.

Re: 832 TB – ZFS on Linux

#48

Post by ethbro »

rdeckard0104 wrote: post #43
notpeter wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

I disagree. FreeBSD is just as easy to administer as Linux. Solaris I find to be a bit more challenging. I can appreciate your commentary, but I challenge you to prove me wrong. Just for some color I've ran the Gambit of Unix and Linux systems in my career with FreeBSD being one of the easiest and most consistent out of the box technologies. Solaris had already been quite the opposite. I guess you could say AIX is a…

> For every competent FreeBSD or Illumos sysadmin there are 10x equally experienced with Linux.

Was parent wrong about that point?

Re: 832 TB – ZFS on Linux

#49

Post by cmurf »

scottLobster wrote: post #38
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…

RedHat is apparently building something new called Stratis based on XFS, they're shooting for delivery within the next 1-2 years. Supposedly it'll be feature-equivalent to ZFS/Btrfs/LVM. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Stratis-R...

The ZFS comment in the document [1] is time inspecific. It's got version 1.0 in 1st half of 2018 and the "rough ZFS feature parity" comment is not until version 3.0, which has no listed time frame.

This is going to take lot of work, and not just for the stratis developers but for projects that need to manipulate it. It's asking for a lot of work for bootloader projects to support it, and

[1] https://stratis-storage.github.io/StratisSoftwareDesign.pdf

Re: 832 TB – ZFS on Linux

#50

Post by cmurf »

gribbly wrote: post #42
majormjr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Red Hat has never spent any real resources on btrfs, they've been all about XFS when it comes to enterprise needs.

They employed one of the original Btrfs developers for the first half of its development, but not since 2012. I can't speak of their recruitment efforts, but it does seem all the Btrfs developers are happy at their respective companies; and the Red Hat file systems folks are happy working on what they're working on which is not Btrfs.
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