Joe Peterson - Latest comments on Linux needs ZFS - and badly!

In response to: Linux needs ZFS - and badly!

HPAVC [Visitor] — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 21:38:28 +0000

Agreed, ZFS now more than ever. Especially after reading the above "why" comments.

It doesn't take long infront of OpenSolaris to see how sexy ZFS. FUSE just doesn't work at the moment as an alternative, but its an amazing effort.

In response to: Linux needs ZFS - and badly!

Core [Visitor] — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:39:42 +0000

One of the reasons why PATA was replaced by SATA !

What about encrypted filesystems ? Would decryption process provide data integrity checks as a side bonus ?

In response to: Linux needs ZFS - and badly!

Goverp [Visitor] — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:24:08 +0000

FWIW: it seems there are at least two ZFS's. The other one (strictly, zFS, "z/OS Distributed File Service zSeries File System") is a file system for IBM System z9 and z10 mainframes' z/OS UNIX System Services, and is an alternative for the earlier HFS.

In response to: Linux needs ZFS - and badly!

Tim [Visitor] — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:52:55 +0000

@Erik: It's important because error detection on lower levels just doesn't do the job. Check out page 9 of Eric Kustarz' ZFS presentation ("ZFS - The Last Word in File Systems") about what else can cause data corruption in addition the simple media errors that HW protection can cover.

Disks are a lot less reliable than RAM. However, don't think that you're right in thinking RAM is never protected by software means: just search for "Software detection mechanisms providing full coverage against single bit-flip faults" for an example.

In response to: Linux needs ZFS - and badly!

Interested [Visitor] — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:39:14 +0000

Apart from filesystembitrot, how do you actually verify that your common-off-the-shelf platform actually DOES something with that expensive ecc-memory if it supports it all? I'm not talking serverhardware in here, but that stuff you'll get at consumerlevel. Desktops and Laptops and the like.

In response to: Linux needs ZFS - and badly!

Erik [Visitor] — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:13:32 +0000

Why should data integrity be handled on the file system level? Does the operating system's memory manager handle data integrity of RAM? I thought that that was handled entirely in hardware and see no reason why permanent storage should be different.

In response to: Linux needs ZFS - and badly!

otc [Visitor] — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 13:14:11 +0000

I just found this blog entry:
http://blogs.sun.com/darren/entry/zfs_under_gplv2_already_exists
As far as I understand, the core ZFS is already GPL2 complaint. Or is this a misunderstanding?

In response to: Linux needs ZFS - and badly!

Pavel [Visitor] — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 13:02:17 +0000

The problem with btrfs is that it will take at least 2-3 years before it gets anywhere near production ... thats a bit too late for most people depending on computers storing the data safe. Actually, to me as a physicist, the failure probability given by the manufacturers seems to almost 'defy' the laws of nature:-) While not being an expert in this field, from what I read a few years ago, it seems to me that some of the technology just works somehow(TM) which doesnt give me a great sense of security ...

As mentioned, the discs arent the only issue. Actually, in the past few years, we had more problems of esp. silent data corruption caused by faulty cables and scsi cards (not only hw wise but also due to bad firmware).

Currently we solve the issue with userspace scripts and utilities (naturally applies only for situations where performance is not needed). We dont even rely on hw/sw raid due to bad experiences but distribute copies of files over dfferent discs from different vendors via rsync and perform regular and on write hashing against a database.