OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/24057/Running_the_Native_ZFS_Linux_Kernel_Module_Plus_Benchmarks Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Sat, 25 May 2013 18:50:15 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com Meh http://www.osnews.com/thread?450865 http://www.osnews.com/thread?450865 I don't like Phoronix. So often, it seems that they don't understand what they are benchmarking. I'd imagine the discussion to benchmark ZFS went something like this.

"Hey. I've got an idea. I just got my hands on a pre-release ZFS Linux module that nobody else has access to. Let's benchmark it!"

"Well, we don't have a test system that's at all representative of what people who need ZFS would be using. I mean, it's only got half the ram that an actual production system might be using at an absolute minimum. Plus, our benchmarks don't run continuously, so the heavy amount of caching that ZFS does won't be utilized, skewing results in a dis-favorable manner. Never mind that this is early code that hasn't even been released yet."

"Yeah, but, people won't realize that until they click through a large amount of pages, each crammed full of as much advertising as possible."
...

Why did they only include Solaris on a couple of tests? They don't say. Tue, 23 Nov 2010 06:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Drumhellar) Comments RE: Meh http://www.osnews.com/thread?450898 http://www.osnews.com/thread?450898 "we don't have a test system that's at all representative of what people who need ZFS would be using."

That won't stop some people from using ZFS, anyway. They'll use it simply because they can. Tue, 23 Nov 2010 15:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (gus3) Comments and you'll never see it shipped with linux http://www.osnews.com/thread?450905 http://www.osnews.com/thread?450905 And you will never see it shipped with linux. Patents covering ZFS are still being argued over in court. NetApp and Sun never settled. Who knows what Oracle will do with the technology. There is no way Linus will ever let something possibly tainted by patent issues ship with the kernel. Tue, 23 Nov 2010 17:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (TechGeek) Comments RE: and you'll never see it shipped with linux http://www.osnews.com/thread?450910 http://www.osnews.com/thread?450910 Shipping with the kernel has nothing to do with patents in this case. GPL & CDDL incompatibility prevents it in the first place. Tue, 23 Nov 2010 18:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (shmerl) Comments RE[2]: Meh http://www.osnews.com/thread?450912 http://www.osnews.com/thread?450912 Still, the benchmarks are useless. They even pass judgement on ZFS using them.

It's like saying Winodws 7 isn't ready, because it runs like crap on my system that has only 512MB of RAM. Tue, 23 Nov 2010 20:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Drumhellar) Comments ZFS "benchmarked" using a single drive? http://www.osnews.com/thread?450929 http://www.osnews.com/thread?450929 From the Phoronix article:
A 60GB OCZ Vertex 2 SSD was used for benchmarking these different file-systems. We had also ran a similar subset of these tests on a standard 7200RPM Serial ATA 2.0 hard drive and proportionally these results didn't end up being different on an HDD over an SSD.


One of the main features of ZFS is storage pooling, and getting rid of all the hassles of managing multiple disks. Testing it on a single disk without testing it on multiple disks is pretty much pointless.

Sure, some people run it on their laptops with a single disk, to get access to all the snapshots and checksumming. But that's an edge use-case, not the primary one.

Sometimes, I think Phoronix just "benchmarks" random things, throws them up on the 'net, and waits to see what sticks. There's really no statistical methodology in place.

On the flip-side, the race is now on to see who gets ZFSv28 first: FreeBSD 9.0 or Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (and whatever other distros KQI supports)

There are ZFSv28 patches available for 9-CURRENT right now, but nothing committed to the source tree as yet. And the Linux kernel is in "limited beta". Both with a release date of "early 2011". Tue, 23 Nov 2010 23:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (phoenix) Comments RE: and you'll never see it shipped with linux http://www.osnews.com/thread?450967 http://www.osnews.com/thread?450967
... Patents covering ZFS are still being argued over in court. NetApp and Sun never settled...


NetApp and Oracle have agreed to dismiss their lawsuits.

http://www.netapp.com/us/company/news/news-rel-20100909-oracle-sett... Wed, 24 Nov 2010 04:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (cl2rsn) Comments RE: ZFS "benchmarked" using a single drive? http://www.osnews.com/thread?451002 http://www.osnews.com/thread?451002 and FreeBSD 9 should be out mid summer ;) Wed, 24 Nov 2010 16:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (feld) Comments