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ZFS 2.3 released with ZFS raidz expansion

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Re: ZFS 2.3 released with ZFS raidz expansion

#261

Post by attentive »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #198
kwanbix wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question. As an end user that uses Windows and Linux and does not uses ZFS, what I am missing?

For a while I ran Open Solaris with ZFS as root filesystem. The key feature for me, which I miss, is the snapshotting integrated into the package manager. ZFS allows snapshots more or less for free (due to copy on weite) including cron based snapshotting every 15 minutes. So if I did a mistake anywhere there was a way to recover. And that integrated with the update manager and boot manager means that on an update a s…

> is the snapshotting integrated into the package manager.

some linux distros have that by default with btrfs. And usually it's a package install away if you're already on btrfs.

Re: ZFS 2.3 released with ZFS raidz expansion

#262

Post by zie »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #205

How does ZFS compare to btrfs? I'm currently using btrfs for my home server, but I've had some strange troubles with it. I'm thinking about switching to ZFS, but I don't want to end up in the same situation.

ZFS has been in production use for almost 20 years now. BTRFS is not fully fit for production, according to BTRFS: https://btrfs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/btrfs-man5.html#raid5...

Some simple use-cases are arguably production ready with BTRFS, YMMV.

Re: ZFS 2.3 released with ZFS raidz expansion

#263

Post by nnadams »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #205

How does ZFS compare to btrfs? I'm currently using btrfs for my home server, but I've had some strange troubles with it. I'm thinking about switching to ZFS, but I don't want to end up in the same situation.

I used Btrfs for a few years but switched away a couple years ago. I also had one or two incidents with Btrfs where some weirdness happened, but I was able to recover everything in the end. Overall I liked the flexibility of Btrfs, but mostly I found it too slow.

I use ZFS on Arch Linux and overall have had no problems with it so far. There's more customization and methods to optimize performance. My one suggestion is to do a lot of research and testing with ZFS. There is a bit of a learning curve, but it's been worth the switch for me.

Re: ZFS 2.3 released with ZFS raidz expansion

#264

Post by GauntletWizard »

ryao wrote: post #67
jfreax wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not yet familiar with zfs and couldn't find it in the release note: Does expansion only works with disk of the same size? Or is adding are bigger/smaller disks possible or do all disk need to have the same size?

You can use different sized disks, but RAID-Z will truncate the space it uses to the lowest common denominator. If you increase the lowest common denominator, RAID-Z should auto-expand to use the additional space. All parity RAID technologies truncate members to the lowest common denominator, rather than just ZFS.

That's not entirely true, Unraid has mechanisms for unbalanced disks, but they come at a high cost in terms of usability by standard workloads.

Re: ZFS 2.3 released with ZFS raidz expansion

#265

Post by cromka »

scrp wrote: post #2

After years in the making ZFS raidz expansaion is finally here. Major features added in release: - RAIDZ Expansion: Add new devices to an existing RAIDZ pool, increasing storage capacity without downtime. - Fast Dedup: A major performance upgrade to the original OpenZFS deduplication functionality. - Direct IO: Allows bypassing the ARC for reads/writes, improving performance in scenarios like NVMe devices where cachi…

So if I’m running a Proxmox on ZFS and NVMEs, will I be better off enabling Direct IO when 2.3 gets rolled out? What are the use cases for it?

Re: ZFS 2.3 released with ZFS raidz expansion

#266

Post by j16sdiz »

poisonborz wrote: post #161
bayindirh wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How come that Windows still uses a 32 year old file system? Simple. Because most of the burden is taken by the (enterprise) storage hardware hosting the FS. Snapshots, block level deduplication, object storage technologies, RAID/Resiliency, size changes, you name it. Modern storage appliances are black magic, and you don't need much more features from NTFS. You either transparently access via NAS/SAN or store your…

So private consumers should just pay cloud subscription if they want safer/modern data storage for their PC? (without NAS)

No, if they need ZFS-like function, they just pay for NAS.

ZFS is not in the same market with AWS S3.

Re: ZFS 2.3 released with ZFS raidz expansion

#267

Post by snvzz »

hoherd wrote: post #223
kwanbix wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question. As an end user that uses Windows and Linux and does not uses ZFS, what I am missing?

Online filesystem checking and repair. Reading any file will tell you with 100% guarantee if it is corrupt or not. Snapshots that you can `cd` into, so you can compare any prior version of your FS with the live version of your FS. Block level compression.

>Reading any file will tell you with 100% guarantee if it is corrupt or not.

Only possible if it was not corrupted in RAM before it was written to disk.

Using ECC memory is important, irrespective of ZFS.

Re: ZFS 2.3 released with ZFS raidz expansion

#268

Post by snvzz »

p_l wrote: post #250
BodyCulture wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How well tested is this in combination with encryption? Is the ZFS team handling encryption as a first class priority at all? ZFS on Linux inherited a lot of fame from ZFS on Solaris, but everyone using it in production should study the issue tracker very well for a realistic impression of the situation.

Main issue with encryption is occasional attempts by certain (specific) Linux kernel developer to lockout ZFS out of access to advanced instruction set extensions (far from the only weird idea of that specific developer). The way ZFS encryption is layered, the features should be pretty much orthogonal from each other, but I'll admit that there's a bit of lacking with ZFS native encryption (though mainly in upper laye…

>occasional attempts by certain (specific) Linux kernel developer

Can we please refer to them by the actual name?

Re: ZFS 2.3 released with ZFS raidz expansion

#269

Post by E39M5S62 »

snvzz wrote: post #268
p_l wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Main issue with encryption is occasional attempts by certain (specific) Linux kernel developer to lockout ZFS out of access to advanced instruction set extensions (far from the only weird idea of that specific developer). The way ZFS encryption is layered, the features should be pretty much orthogonal from each other, but I'll admit that there's a bit of lacking with ZFS native encryption (though mainly in upper laye…

>occasional attempts by certain (specific) Linux kernel developer Can we please refer to them by the actual name?

Greg Kroah-Hartman.

Re: ZFS 2.3 released with ZFS raidz expansion

#270

Post by E39M5S62 »

zbentley wrote: post #151
endorphine wrote: post #25

Can someone describe why they would use ZFS (or similar) for home usage?

I use ZFS for boot and storage volumes on my main workstation, which is primarily that--a workstation, not a server or NAS. Some benefits: - Excellent filesystem level backup facility. I can transfer snapshots to a spare drive, or send/receive to a remote (at present a spare computer, but rsync.net looks better every year I have to fix up the spare). - Unlike other fs-level backup solutions, the flexibility of zvols…

It's great to hear that you're using ZFSBootMenu the way I envisioned it! There's such a sense of relief and freedom having snapshots of your whole OS taken every 15 minutes.

One thing that you might not be aware of is that you can create a zpool checkpoint before doing something 'dangerous' (disk swap, pool version upgrade, etc) and if it goes badly, roll back to that checkpoint in ZFSBootMenu on the Pool tab. Keep in mind though that you can only have one checkpoint at a time, they keep growing and growing, and a rollback is for EVERYTHING on the pool.

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