On Thu, Oct 06, 2016 at 03:42:36AM +0100, Adam Richmond-Gordon wrote:

> Thank you for pointing that out - I had it in my head that a single
> log device would be safe.

There's only one failure mode (AFAIK) where a single log device will
cause data loss; if your box crashes or has an unclean shutdown (say due
to a power failure) while there are uncommitted entries on the log
device, and the device fails before the system comes back online to
process them.

If the device dies while the system is running the log will fall back to
being on the pool and any uncommitted entries are still in memory and
won't be lost. If the device dies after a clean shutdown or poweroff
there won't be any uncommitted entries on it and when the system comes
up it will fail the device and again just fall back to an on-pool log.

So while it's true that a single log device is non-redundant, it's a lot
less "not safe" than say a non-redundant pool. You'd have to be pretty
unlucky to actually have data loss from losing a non-redundant log
device. Of course, depending on the importance of your data, that might
not be a risk you want to take. But for a budget sensitive system, a
single high-cost SSD for a log isn't an insane configuration if you
think the odds of your system crashing/powering off dirty at the exact
same time your log device dies are pretty low.


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