Linus: Don't Use ZFS • Hacker News Board

Re: Linus: Don't Use ZFS

#21

Post by rkagerer » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 8:54 PM UTC

gigatexal wrote: post #5

He mentioned that he didn’t think it was being maintained. It’s more or less been formed no? Has Linus not seen the work that the OpenZFS folks are doing? ZFS is amazing and I would soon go to a BSD flavor with a fun set of user land utilities than give it up.

He also feels ZFS "was always more of a buzzword than anything else". Yikes.

Re: Linus: Don't Use ZFS

#22

Post by Covzire » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 8:54 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #11

Hamuko wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's his reasoning for not merging ZFS code, not for generally avoiding ZFS.

Well he had this: > as far as I can tell, it has no real maintenance behind it either any more Which simply isn't true. They just released a new ZFS version with encryption built in (no more ZFS + LUKS) and they removed the SPL dependency (which didn't support Linux 5.0+ anyway). I use ZFS on my Linux machines for my storage and I've been rather happy with it.

Same, for at least 6 years in a 4 drive zraid array. It always reads and writes at full gigabit ethernet speeds and I haven't had any downtime other than maintaining FreeBSD updates which are trivial even when going from 10.x to 11 to 12.

Re: Linus: Don't Use ZFS

#23

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 8:56 PM UTC

Alright, Linus, I'll make you a deal: I'll consider dropping ZFS when you ship a production-grade BTRFS (or reiserfs or anything else with the same features).

Re: Linus: Don't Use ZFS

#24

Post by rleigh » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 8:57 PM UTC

Covzire wrote: post #13

Hamuko wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's his reasoning for not merging ZFS code, not for generally avoiding ZFS.

Relevant bits: "Don't use ZFS. It's that simple. It was always more of a buzzword than anything else, I feel, and the licensing issues just make it a non-starter for me. The benchmarks I've seen do not make ZFS look all that great. And as far as I can tell, it has no real maintenance behind it either any more, so from a long-term stability standpoint, why would you ever want to use it in the first place?"

Not sure where that belief comes from. But it might be that many benchmarks are naive and compare it against other filesystems in single-disc setups with zero tuning. Since its metadata overheads are higher, it's definitely slower in this scenario. However, put a pool onto an array of discs and tune it a little, and the performance scales up and up leaving all Linux-native filesystems, and LVM/dm/mdraid, well behind. It's a shame that Linux has nothing compelling to do better than this.

Re: Linus: Don't Use ZFS

#25

Post by fgonzag » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 8:58 PM UTC

reacharavindh wrote: post #10

As a heavy user of ZFS and Linux, what else is there that even comes close to what ZFS offers? I want cheap and reliable snapshots, export & import of file systems like ZFS datasets, simple compression, caching facilities(like SLOG and ARC) and decent performance.

Bcachefs is probably the only thing that will get there. The codebase is clean and we'll mantained, built from solid technology (bcache) and will include most of the ZFS niceties. I just wish more companies would sponsor de project and stop wasting money on BTRFS

Re: Linus: Don't Use ZFS

#26

Post by jessant » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 8:58 PM UTC

reacharavindh wrote: post #10

As a heavy user of ZFS and Linux, what else is there that even comes close to what ZFS offers? I want cheap and reliable snapshots, export & import of file systems like ZFS datasets, simple compression, caching facilities(like SLOG and ARC) and decent performance.

Does btrfs met your requirements?

Re: Linus: Don't Use ZFS

#27

Post by bromonkey » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 8:59 PM UTC

"Don't use ZFS. It's that simple. It was always more of a buzzword than anything else, I feel, and the licensing issues just make it a non-starter for me." - Linus

I have a strong feeling Linus has never actually used ZFS.

Re: Linus: Don't Use ZFS

#28

Post by xupybd » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 9:00 PM UTC

reacharavindh wrote: post #10

As a heavy user of ZFS and Linux, what else is there that even comes close to what ZFS offers? I want cheap and reliable snapshots, export & import of file systems like ZFS datasets, simple compression, caching facilities(like SLOG and ARC) and decent performance.

I agree that ZFS has a lot to offer. But the legal difficulties in merging ZFS support into the mainline kernal are understandable. It's a shame but I think he is making the right call.

Re: Linus: Don't Use ZFS

#29

Post by bayindirh » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 9:00 PM UTC

reacharavindh wrote: post #10

As a heavy user of ZFS and Linux, what else is there that even comes close to what ZFS offers? I want cheap and reliable snapshots, export & import of file systems like ZFS datasets, simple compression, caching facilities(like SLOG and ARC) and decent performance.

Honestly asking, how Btrfs compares to ZFS?

There's also Lustre but it's a different beast altogether for a different scenario.

Re: Linus: Don't Use ZFS

#30

Post by nosequel » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 9:00 PM UTC

jessant wrote: post #26

reacharavindh wrote: post #10

As a heavy user of ZFS and Linux, what else is there that even comes close to what ZFS offers? I want cheap and reliable snapshots, export & import of file systems like ZFS datasets, simple compression, caching facilities(like SLOG and ARC) and decent performance.

Does btrfs met your requirements?

btrfs is not at all reliable, so if you care about your files staying working files, it probably doesn't meet your requirements. It is like the MongoDB 0.1 of filesystems.