Thoughts on ZFS-FUSE stability?

Drifty Flintlock · 2010-12-04 05:11:30

I'm considering putting ZFS on my home file server for the data drives, and setting it up for mirrored RAID. I was wondering if anyone had any experiences with it as far as stability and data loss, good or bad. Performance isn't a HUGE concern, since it's just for my own use. I do keep backups on an external hard drive in any case, but that's one of those things you hope you never have to use.

So has anyone used ZFS-FUSE extensively, and if so, how was your experience with it? Is it ready for prime time, or not?

boogy · 2010-12-06 12:34:19

On solaris systems is rely stable and powerful, I haven't tested yet on Linux.. But in my opinion if you know what your doing you won't have a problem.

I think its stable enough for personal use.

jowilkin · 2010-12-06 19:17:32

boogy wrote:

On solaris systems is rely stable and powerful, I haven't tested yet on Linux.. But in my opinion if you know what your doing you won't have a problem.
I think its stable enough for personal use.

It is quite different from the Solaris implementation though, it is done with FUSE so is a userspace filesystem.

Performance will certainly take a big hit because of this, and I wouldn't assume that stability has not been compromised in some way as well, especially considering the quite small number of users it most likely has.

thestinger · 2010-12-06 19:42:19

There's also a native kernel module now: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a … arks&num=4 (zfs in the aur, zfs-fuse is the userspace one).

btrfs is still "unstable", but it might be more stable than the zfs port, so you should consider that too. It's already the default file system in at least one linux distro.

Last edited by thestinger (2010-12-06 19:44:24)

boogy · 2010-12-06 19:48:29

Here is a small link : http://zfsonlinux.org/

jowilkin · 2010-12-07 00:22:50

Has anyone tried the kernel modules? My understanding is they are still pretty incomplete and using a solaris compatibility layer.

TomB17 · 2011-03-29 15:25:58

This is an old post but I've been playing around with the kernel and fuse ZFS modules. ZFS is a very compelling file system. I'm going to stick with it.

has anyone used ZFS-FUSE extensively, and if so, how was your experience with it? Is it ready for prime time, or not?

I've been using ZFS-FUSE for several weeks with many terabytes of data and I believe it is stable and ready for prime time. In fact, I've been specifically stress testing it to see if it's ready for production. It has been in significant use for a few years now.

As jowilkin has pointed out, speed is not the strong suit of ZFS-FUSE. It's dead slow. Take a single drive that can hit speeds of 100MBps on a large file copy, put it with seven other identical drives in a raidz array using ZFS-FUSE, and you'll be down under 20MBps.

If you're going to warehouse a whole ton of stuff, I don't see any other choice. It's the only check summing filesystem I am aware of that can be considered production ready. If you need high bandwidth into the information, ZFS is not going to be up to the job.

If you were to compare ZFS-FUSE to something like a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+, or similar, ZFS-FUSE flies. For backup purposes, ZFS-FUSE is well sufficient.

The ZFS kenel modules are not ready for production or even personal use, IMO. They are, however, very interesting. I look forward to the day I can migrate my data to the ZFS kernel module system and see a speed boost. That day is years away, though.

Last edited by TomB17 (2011-03-29 15:27:18)

sand_man · 2011-03-31 04:58:14

I just migrated my data to zfs-fuse today. As TomB17 pointed out, it is dead slow but I don't need it fast. It's just for storage. I wouldn't put any system directories on it yet because of that but I can finally scratch that itch I've had since shutting down my FreeBSD server. Also I dual boot with Mac OS X so I'm hoping I can get zfs working on that. Not sure if they are at the same version or not though...
I want to try the kernel modules but they don't support kernels greater the 2.6.36 which doesn't help Arch.

gour · 2011-08-24 08:44:34

TomB17 wrote:

The ZFS kenel modules are not ready for production or even personal use, IMO. They are, however, very interesting. I look forward to the day I can migrate my data to the ZFS kernel module system and see a speed boost. That day is years away, though.

Has something changed in between in regard to ZFS kernel modules?

I use ZFS on FreeBSD at the moment, but planning to return back to Arch and wonder what is better option: btrfs or zfs for desktop machine and two (1TB) disks in mirror mode?

doublerebel · 2011-09-22 20:19:59

Well, since few people seem to be talking about the current state of ZFS on Linux, I'll offer my experience:

Other than a solvable bug preventing some filesystems from NFS export (affects ZFS and other FS as well), I've found ZFS-FUSE to be a pleasure to use. ZFS is much more mature than BTRFS and I think a production-functional kernel module is not far away. BTRFS has had recent data loss issues and I wouldn't trust my important data to it yet.

I am running a 4-disk RAIDZ2 setup with 4 2TB disks that gives me ~3.7TB of usable space with dual redundancy. If you decide to expand your storage, ZFS makes it a breeze. NFS exporting with ZFS is also super easy, as long as you organize your ZFS 'filesystems' properly. It's a bit different thinking about ZFS filesystems but I really like it (individual permissions and sharing settings, variable size, nestable) now that I'm used to it. I also have no trouble sharing the filesystems over Samba to my Windows boxes.

ZFS-FUSE is not blazing fast but it's fast enough for my NAS running backups and serving high-bandwidth media. The self-checking/self-healing feature gives me a calm feeling about data I haven't had before. It's easy to get status and statistics about the current state of the FS from the zfs and zpool commands. I only wish I'd switched my NAS to ZFS sooner!

EDIT: This post by a BSD user describes well how I feel about ZFS:

ZFS is not just only another filesystem. And there are faster filesystems out there.
But if you need the features of ZFS, it is the best you have ever worked with.
http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Com … zfs/whatis

Last edited by doublerebel (2011-09-22 20:26:20)

Arch Linux

#1 2010-12-04 05:11:30

Thoughts on ZFS-FUSE stability?

#2 2010-12-06 12:34:19

Re: Thoughts on ZFS-FUSE stability?

#3 2010-12-06 19:17:32

Re: Thoughts on ZFS-FUSE stability?

#4 2010-12-06 19:42:19

Re: Thoughts on ZFS-FUSE stability?

#5 2010-12-06 19:48:29

Re: Thoughts on ZFS-FUSE stability?

#6 2010-12-07 00:22:50

Re: Thoughts on ZFS-FUSE stability?

#7 2011-03-29 15:25:58

Re: Thoughts on ZFS-FUSE stability?

#8 2011-03-31 04:58:14

Re: Thoughts on ZFS-FUSE stability?

#9 2011-08-24 08:44:34

Re: Thoughts on ZFS-FUSE stability?

#10 2011-09-22 20:19:59

Re: Thoughts on ZFS-FUSE stability?

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