Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs comparison
Matty wrote: On Jan 18, 2008 7:35 AM, Darren J Moffat [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sengor wrote: On 1/17/08, Darren J Moffat [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Pardon my ignorance, but is ZFS with compression safe to use in a production environment? Yes, why wouldn't it be ? If it wasn't safe it wouldn't have been delivered. Few reasons - http://prefetch.net/blog/index.php/2007/11/28/is-zfs-ready-for-primetime/ The article (not the comments) is complete free of content and is scare mongering. It doesn't even say wither this is ZFS on Solaris (vs BSD or MacOS X) never mind what release or the configuration of the pool or even what the actual bug apparently. Was the pool redundant if there were bugs what are the bug numbers and are they fixed. I don't think this is scare mongering at all. I wrote the blog entry after a ZFS bug (6454482) corrupted a pool on one of our production servers, and a yet unidentified bug (which appears to be different than 6454482) corrupted a pool on another system. ZFS is an incredible file system, but based on the fact that we lost data twice, I am somewhat hesitant to continue to using it. I have no issue at all with people blogging bugs and comments. What I had (and have) an issue with is when no details are given that is when it is scare mongering and FUD. Provide at least a little detail, eg what release you are running on and at least a symptom of the problem (eg zpool status said everything was faulted), ideally as much of the storage config as you can - particularly the pool config (mirror vs raidz vs single disk). -- Darren J Moffat ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs comparison
Sengor wrote: On 1/19/08, Fred Zlotnick [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But, of course, many other enterprise customers _have_ adopted ZFS, and are quite happy with it. For a list of ZFS reference customers please contact Solaris Marketing. ZFS is used in many mission critical roles today, and by and large our customers are thrilled with it. I'd wonder what the real word proportions are. I suspect marketing'd mainly know of the ones who did adopt it. Enterprise customers tend to be late adopters. Indeed, there is still a healthy number of new deployments of Solaris 8 today, 4 years after the last Solaris 8 update. Obviously these people do not deploy ZFS. Yes, we have a sense of this, at least for people who purchase support from Sun, but in this open world, it becomes harder to determine the installed base. OTOH, 100% of the people who are experimenting with project Indiana use ZFS. -- richard ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs comparison
On Jan 18, 2008 7:35 AM, Darren J Moffat [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sengor wrote: On 1/17/08, Darren J Moffat [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Pardon my ignorance, but is ZFS with compression safe to use in a production environment? Yes, why wouldn't it be ? If it wasn't safe it wouldn't have been delivered. Few reasons - http://prefetch.net/blog/index.php/2007/11/28/is-zfs-ready-for-primetime/ The article (not the comments) is complete free of content and is scare mongering. It doesn't even say wither this is ZFS on Solaris (vs BSD or MacOS X) never mind what release or the configuration of the pool or even what the actual bug apparently. Was the pool redundant if there were bugs what are the bug numbers and are they fixed. I don't think this is scare mongering at all. I wrote the blog entry after a ZFS bug (6454482) corrupted a pool on one of our production servers, and a yet unidentified bug (which appears to be different than 6454482) corrupted a pool on another system. ZFS is an incredible file system, but based on the fact that we lost data twice, I am somewhat hesitant to continue to using it. Just my .02, - Ryan -- UNIX Administrator http://prefetch.net ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs comparison
On 1/17/08, Darren J Moffat [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Pardon my ignorance, but is ZFS with compression safe to use in a production environment? Yes, why wouldn't it be ? If it wasn't safe it wouldn't have been delivered. Few reasons - http://prefetch.net/blog/index.php/2007/11/28/is-zfs-ready-for-primetime/ -- _/ sengork.blogspot.com / ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs comparison
Sengor wrote: On 1/17/08, Darren J Moffat [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Pardon my ignorance, but is ZFS with compression safe to use in a production environment? Yes, why wouldn't it be ? If it wasn't safe it wouldn't have been delivered. Few reasons - http://prefetch.net/blog/index.php/2007/11/28/is-zfs-ready-for-primetime/ The article (not the comments) is complete free of content and is scare mongering. It doesn't even say wither this is ZFS on Solaris (vs BSD or MacOS X) never mind what release or the configuration of the pool or even what the actual bug apparently. Was the pool redundant if there were bugs what are the bug numbers and are they fixed. Simply FUD. -- Darren J Moffat ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs comparison
On 1/18/08, Sengor [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I don't see many enterprises adopting ZFS even though it's been
officially out for a while now. Looking over the mailing list and
numbers of ZFS patches, it's enough to scare lots of people away.
I suspect that the amount of changes / discussion is no less
for ZFS than for any new filesystem, just that due to the open source
nature of it the discussions are in public view. The fact that the
issues *are* being discussed is a huge advantage in my mind. At least
we *know* that the issue are being recognized. I don't know how many
times I have filed bug reports on various aspects of an OS and never
get a good response that the issue has been recognized as such.
Don't get me wrong, I believe ZFS is a great product to have come out
of Sun's software group, however I don't think it's matured enough to
be relied upon with mission crititcal systems. ZFS is changing too
fast to be considered stable in my opinion...
I expect that UFS was not changing much because it had spent
so many years changing already ;-) Seriously, I was seeing serious
changes in SLVM/UFS up until about a year or two ago. I even ran into
one of the issues created by fixing another issue with SLVM about a
year ago. We are using ZFS in a couple 'production' roles, only one of
which is critical, and we picked ZFS because no other FS we tested
scaled the way we needed it to.
I still see VxSF (for those who can afford it) being the defacto choice.
VxFS did not have the performance we needed without lots of
tuning, while ZFS did fine right out of the box. We had moved away
from VxVM/VxFS years ago due to SLVM maturing and giving us the
features we really needed, SLVM was easier to manage, and OS upgrades
are *much* simpler with SLVM than with VxVM/VxFS. There was no real
justification for the cost and more difficult management of VxVM/VxFS.
For some background, I have been using both VxVM/VxFS and
DiskSuite / SLVM since about 1996.
--
{1-2-3-4-5-6-7-}
Paul Kraus
- Sound Designer, Noel Coward's Hay Fever
@ Albany Civic Theatre, Feb./Mar. 2008
- Facilities Coordinator, Albacon 2008
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Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs comparison
Paul Kraus wrote: On 1/18/08, Sengor [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Don't get me wrong, I believe ZFS is a great product to have come out of Sun's software group, however I don't think it's matured enough to be relied upon with mission crititcal systems. ZFS is changing too fast to be considered stable in my opinion... I expect that UFS was not changing much because it had spent so many years changing already ;-) In the software life cycle, there is a time where you stop modifying code because it is so fragile and its interdependencies are so complex that you can't risk change. This is where UFS is. There are many bugs and RFEs which will never be implemented in UFS. When this happens, something else inevitably comes along to replace it, hopefully with a modern design using modern development methods. That is where ZFS is. For example, the test suite for ZFS is both open and comprehensive. We all wish that UFS had something like it all those years ago... http://blogs.sun.com/bill/entry/zfs_and_the_all_singing So there are two ways of looking at unchanging (stable?) code, either it is truly perfect or it is at its end of life. I have a nice bottle of champagne for the day I find perfect code :-) -- richard ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs comparison
On Jan 18, 2008, at 4:23 AM, Sengor wrote: On 1/17/08, Darren J Moffat [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Pardon my ignorance, but is ZFS with compression safe to use in a production environment? Yes, why wouldn't it be ? If it wasn't safe it wouldn't have been delivered. Few reasons - http://prefetch.net/blog/index.php/2007/11/28/is-zfs- ready-for-primetime/ The only details we have from that blog entry are bugs: 6454482 and 6458218. 6454482 was a bug found in prototype code and is closed as non reproducible. 6458218 has been fixed in snv_60 (over 10 months ago). 10 months ago seems like a long time to me, but i don't control admin's upgrade schedules. Matty, if you really did see an instance of 6454482, please let us know. eric -- _/ sengork.blogspot.com / ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs comparison
Many enterprise customers have told us that they are waiting for two features, not yet available in ZFS, before they will adopt it widely in their datacenter environments: - The ability to boot off of a ZFS partition. I don't actually understand this one, since you can't boot Solaris from a VxFS file system either, but I've heard it many times. The work to enable this is in progress. - The ability to permanently shrink the size of a zpool by removing a lun after migrating all the data off of it. This makes sense to me. The work to enable this is in progress. But, of course, many other enterprise customers _have_ adopted ZFS, and are quite happy with it. For a list of ZFS reference customers please contact Solaris Marketing. ZFS is used in many mission critical roles today, and by and large our customers are thrilled with it. -- Fred Sengor wrote: On 1/18/08, Darren J Moffat [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Simply FUD. I don't see many enterprises adopting ZFS even though it's been officially out for a while now. Looking over the mailing list and numbers of ZFS patches, it's enough to scare lots of people away. Don't get me wrong, I believe ZFS is a great product to have come out of Sun's software group, however I don't think it's matured enough to be relied upon with mission crititcal systems. ZFS is changing too fast to be considered stable in my opinion... I still see VxSF (for those who can afford it) being the defacto choice. -- Fred Zlotnick Senior Director, Solaris NAS Sun Microsystems, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] x85006/+1 650 786 5006 ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs comparison
On 1/19/08, Darren J Moffat [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On what do you base that statement ? How do you see what enterprises are adopting ? State your sources please. Out of the many I work on only one's been keen on adopting it any time soon, another one's planning to look into it but doesn't see many benefits in it over VxSF (storage foundation). Main struggle for companies is migrating to ZFS from other solutions out there, and still keeping the functionality/processes/standards they need on regular basis (eg. data migrations, BCVs and backup strategies, remote replication, DR, and general uptime of their applications). People should not only see the enterprises which have adopted ZFS, there's plenty of them which haven't done so for various good/bad reasons. Partially due to their scale and complexity/worthiness of deploying something new cross company wide, which might not be necessarely a ZFS specific obstacle. -- _/ sengork.blogspot.com / ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs comparison
On 1/18/08, Darren J Moffat [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Simply FUD. I don't see many enterprises adopting ZFS even though it's been officially out for a while now. Looking over the mailing list and numbers of ZFS patches, it's enough to scare lots of people away. Don't get me wrong, I believe ZFS is a great product to have come out of Sun's software group, however I don't think it's matured enough to be relied upon with mission crititcal systems. ZFS is changing too fast to be considered stable in my opinion... I still see VxSF (for those who can afford it) being the defacto choice. -- _/ sengork.blogspot.com / ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs comparison
Sengor wrote: On 1/18/08, Darren J Moffat [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Simply FUD. I don't see many enterprises adopting ZFS even though it's been officially out for a while now. On what do you base that statement ? How do you see what enterprises are adopting ? State your sources please. -- Darren J Moffat ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs comparison
On 1/19/08, Paul Kraus [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I suspect that the amount of changes / discussion is no less for ZFS than for any new filesystem, just that due to the open source nature of it the discussions are in public view. The fact that the issues *are* being discussed is a huge advantage in my mind. At least we *know* that the issue are being recognized. I don't know how many times I have filed bug reports on various aspects of an OS and never get a good response that the issue has been recognized as such. I've always argued about Sun and their sheer amount of patches for any software they seem to release. It's a good/bad situation. On the bright side they are pro active in creating and releasing patches, even their IDR process is a good idea and very pro active of them. On the contrary you could look at it as if their software always ends up needing more and more patches no matter how many patches you end up applying, you're almost always out of date and vulnerable to potentially critical known/unknown issues. AIX doesn't seem to have lots of patches out there (nowhere as many as Solaris). One could argue that the software it self does not need to be patched after it's released. Then again you could argue vendor's not too proactive in chasing up patches and the userbase doesn't find many bugs to begin with... I guess both have to do with company's support strategy (in one way or another). VxFS did not have the performance we needed without lots of tuning, while ZFS did fine right out of the box. We had moved away from VxVM/VxFS years ago due to SLVM maturing and giving us the features we really needed, SLVM was easier to manage, and OS upgrades are *much* simpler with SLVM than with VxVM/VxFS. There was no real justification for the cost and more difficult management of VxVM/VxFS. For some background, I have been using both VxVM/VxFS and DiskSuite / SLVM since about 1996. VxSF is not a typo it seems to be. I was referring to Veritas Storage Foundation, not only VxFS. ZFS isn't only a filesystem hence should not be compared to only VxFS. We avoid using VxSF for OS volumes, use SVM for those instead because as you say it's easier and cleaner to maintain. VxSF overcomplicates simple environments, however it makes complex environments easier to manage. I'd not want to manage 100s of multipathed LUNs via SVM on a clustered system when VxSF is an option. I expect that UFS was not changing much because it had spent so many years changing already ;-) Seriously, I was seeing serious changes in SLVM/UFS up until about a year or two ago. I even ran into one of the issues created by fixing another issue with SLVM about a year ago. We are using ZFS in a couple 'production' roles, only one of which is critical, and we picked ZFS because no other FS we tested scaled the way we needed it to. Again ZFS and VxSF all fit differing purposes. I see ZFS trying to compete with VxSF, but not the other way around (at least not in techincal aspects). -- _/ sengork.blogspot.com / ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs comparison
On 1/19/08, Fred Zlotnick [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But, of course, many other enterprise customers _have_ adopted ZFS, and are quite happy with it. For a list of ZFS reference customers please contact Solaris Marketing. ZFS is used in many mission critical roles today, and by and large our customers are thrilled with it. I'd wonder what the real word proportions are. I suspect marketing'd mainly know of the ones who did adopt it. -- _/ sengork.blogspot.com / ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs comparison
Agile Aspect wrote: Hi - I'm new to ZFS but not to Solaris. Is there a search able interface to the zfs-discuss mail archives? Use google against the mailman archives: http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/ Pardon my ignorance, but is ZFS with compression safe to use in a production environment? Yes, why wouldn't it be ? If it wasn't safe it wouldn't have been delivered. What kind of unsafe behaviour are you worried about ? It is possible that other ZFS features mitigate issues you may be worried about or have experienced elsewhere. -- Darren J Moffat ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs comparison
Hello Agile, Comments in-between Thursday, January 17, 2008, 2:20:42 AM, you wrote: AA Hi - I'm new to ZFS but not to Solaris. AA Is there a search able interface to the zfs-discuss mail archives? http://opensolaris.org/os/discussions/ and look for zfs-discuss list. AA We have a Windows 2003 Cluster with 200 TB SAN running under AA Active Directory with file system compression. AA Half the population is running Linux and the other half is running AA Windows XP. AA I'm interested in replacing the Window 2003 Cluster and filesystem AA compression with Solaris 10 and ZFS compression. AA Pardon my ignorance, but is ZFS with compression safe to use in a AA production environment? Yes, it is. Keep in mind that if you go for Solaris 10 the only compression supported right now is lzjb. Open Solaris additionally suppports gzip. -- Best regards, Robert Milkowski mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://milek.blogspot.com ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs comparison
Pardon my ignorance, but is ZFS with compression safe to use in a production environment? I'd say, as safe as ZFS in general. ZFS has been well-tested by Sun, but it's not as mature as UFS, say. There is not yet a fsck equivalent for ZFS, so if a bug results in damage to your ZFS data pool, you'll need to restore the whole pool from backups. This may or may not be an issue depending on the amount of downtime you can tolerate (and the size of your pool). Adding compression to the mix doesn't really increase risk, IMO. As always, test yourself, in your environment before deploying. :-) Anton This message posted from opensolaris.org ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
[zfs-discuss] zfs comparison
Hi - I'm new to ZFS but not to Solaris. Is there a search able interface to the zfs-discuss mail archives? We have a Windows 2003 Cluster with 200 TB SAN running under Active Directory with file system compression. Half the population is running Linux and the other half is running Windows XP. I'm interested in replacing the Window 2003 Cluster and filesystem compression with Solaris 10 and ZFS compression. Pardon my ignorance, but is ZFS with compression safe to use in a production environment? Any help would be greatly appreciated. -- Ken -- We are drowning in information and starving for knowledge. - Rutherford D. Roger ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
