ZFS Advice needed

symbioza · 2013-06-09 13:01:13

Hi!
Recently I read a lot about ZFS, can anyone tell me if there is any performance difference while using it on desktop instead of ext4? Cause I'm wondering if it makes sense to use it as my default fs.

Last edited by symbioza (2013-06-09 13:02:15)

teateawhy · 2013-06-09 13:06:05

Performance is decent in my experience, but have a look at a benchmark instead:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n … px=MTM1NTA

karol · 2013-06-09 13:07:12

If you don't need the features ZFS offers, why leave ext4? If you do need them, then performance is not the primary consideration.

Last edited by karol (2013-06-09 13:09:07)

symbioza · 2013-06-09 13:10:36

Looks like ext4 beats zfs in each test, but does it really makes so big difference in "normal" usage?

Karol, I'm considering leaving ext for zfs mostly because of this shapshot function, cause I like to experiment and sometimes things go wrong

Last edited by symbioza (2013-06-09 13:13:29)

karol · 2013-06-09 13:12:11

Do you need the features that ZFS provides? If you want to try it, just read the wiki and go for it, see for yourself, if the performance difference is negligible or not.

symbioza · 2013-06-09 13:14:48

Yeah, maybe that's the best idea ;-)

teateawhy · 2013-06-09 13:15:18

How many disks to you plan to manage with zfs?

karol · 2013-06-09 13:18:32

symbioza wrote:

I'm considering leaving ext for zfs mostly because of this shapshot function, cause I like to experiment and sometimes things go wrong

btrfs has similar features: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Btrfs

symbioza · 2013-06-09 13:18:33

One at laptop, and two at desktop

Karol, brtfs is not as stable as zfs

Last edited by symbioza (2013-06-09 13:19:20)

teateawhy · 2013-06-09 13:26:16

I don't recommend using zfs for only one or two disks.

WonderWoofy · 2013-06-09 13:27:28

btrfs is not as stable as zfs, this is true, but zfs is not native to linux, so the port has only just become "stable" itself. Plus, you have to build spl, zfs, spl-utils, and zfs-utils with every kernel upgrade, and it is not quite so straight forward. Demizerone has an unofficial repo that he keeps pretty up to date, but then you are relying on a single person for your upgrade path.

lucke · 2013-06-09 13:29:31

btrfs might be not as stable as zfs on (Open)Solaris or FreeBSD, but the question is, is zfsonlinux as stable as zfs on these OSes?

symbioza · 2013-06-09 13:32:34

So, I see that it's pointless to leave ext in my case. Thanks for your help guys ;-)

karol · 2013-06-09 13:34:47

WonderWoofy wrote:

btrfs is not as stable as zfs, this is true, but zfs is not native to linux

This.

symbioza wrote:

So, I see that it's pointless to leave ext in my case. Thanks for your help guys ;-)

If you want, you can try btrfs out ;P

WonderWoofy · 2013-06-09 13:37:29

I really love btrfs. It is neato! Plus, if you use it in a raid1 setup, it is totally self healing with the checksums when it scrubs, and it has the benefits of dual reading like mdadm raid1. Like I said, neato!

symbioza · 2013-06-09 14:17:51

karol wrote:

If you want, you can try btrfs out ;P

And that's what I'm going to do this evening

karol · 2013-06-09 14:23:46

symbioza wrote:

karol wrote:
If you want, you can try btrfs out ;P
And that's what I'm going to do this evening

I'll be overeating strawberries ;P

There's also http://www.ext3cow.com/ext3cow/Welcome.html , which can do snapshots too.
http://www.ext3cow.com/ext3cow/FAQ.html tells you what the performance drawbacks are.

WonderWoofy · 2013-06-09 14:24:53

symbioza wrote:

And that's what I'm going to do this evening

Its neato!

A word of advice though, though our wiki provides a nice glimpse into getting started with btrfs, there are so many features with btrfs that you should really go to the btrfs wiki and peruse the stuff they have in there. At the bottom the the home page of the btrfs wiki, there are some links, and there is a set of two that I really liked. They were short and sweet and really gave me an idea of what i was getting into there. They are the ones about "how I got started with" and "How I use the advanced features of" btrfs.

You might also want to read through the recommended procedure of recovering from a potentially corrupted filesystem. Unlike other filesystems, which have you jump straight to fsck, the btrfsck should not be used unless necessary. So it is good to have an idea of what you should do in that event before it happens.

Edit: If you are still interested in using zfs, Gentoo/Funtoo has ebuilds in the portage tree. If compilation of an entire system is too much to simply try out the filesystem, then you can also use Sabayon, which is Gentoo based, and I think has binary packages of zfs, zfs-utils, spl, and spl-utils in their repos. Then of course there is the *BSDs, which will probably have better zfs performance than linux anyway... beat only by Solaris.

Last edited by WonderWoofy (2013-06-09 14:27:13)

Arch Linux

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ZFS Advice needed

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