It seems like we're really on the subject of filesystems and related technology the past few days. We had an interview with the man behind BeServed, an item on WinFS' current status, and now we - possibly - have news on ZFS coming to Linux. Possibly, because it's all speculation from here on out.
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Member since:2005-07-08
Then you might want to read this comment about ZFS on BSD:
http://kerneltrap.org/FreeBSD/ZFS_Stability
RE: Comment by sonic2000gr
Member since:2005-10-23
>>but in FreeBSD it is yet an experimental feature.
>So what? Linux doesn't care anything about quality, they would mark it stable at once.
Linux is a kernel, can it care ?
>>that it works best on 64bit systems with 2Gb or more RAM
>It's for server, not for the desktop.
Oh, that's why Sun made It the default for Opensolaris.
Member since:2005-11-09
Member since:2007-05-20
Member since:2005-07-08
Member since:2005-07-11
And there is good reason for that! I don't know about the status of ZFS in MacOSX, but in FreeBSD it is yet an experimental feature. It has been suggested that it works best on 64bit systems with 2Gb or more RAM. "
You can use it just fine on 32-bit systems. You just have to tune it and the kernel correctly. Adding "vfs.zfs.arc_max" (set to between 1/3 and 1/2 of your RAM) and "vfs.zfs.prefetch_disable" (set to 1) will handle most of the known issues with running ZFS on FreeBSD 7.0 and 7-STABLE.
Other things that can be tuned are listed in the ZFS Tuning Guide on the FreeBSD wiki.
Having more than 1 GB of RAM available does make it run smoother, but several people are running it with only 512 MB of RAM.
Granted, it's not perfect, and there are some issues. But it's not the train wreck that people make it out to be.
Member since:2007-05-20
If it was a train wreck, it wouldn't be in FreeBSD AT ALL
I will wait until things clear up though. At this moment using ZFS is simply not justified on my systems. But it will be a nice "toy" for me on the next release.
Member since:2006-03-24
Member since:2005-07-14
I'm running FreeBSD 7 with ZFS (best... filesystem... EVER) on a dual P2 350MHz machine with 512MB of RAM.
I've seen 2-3 filesystem-related panics and sometimes the ZFS will deadlock, resulting in a hung filesystem until I reboot the system (a former BeOS development machine).
That said, I knew it was "experimental" still when I started using it. The benefits have outweighed the issues... it's only a home file/print server, if it hangs it's not a big deal.
Having 1GB or more of RAM on a server system isn't a ridiculous requirement these days, although it has been hard for me to find some additional RAM for this box. :-P
Member since:
2007-05-20
And there is good reason for that! I don't know about the status of ZFS in MacOSX, but in FreeBSD it is yet an experimental feature. It has been suggested that it works best on 64bit systems with 2Gb or more RAM. At this point I believe few people know how to implement it, and even fewer will have any actual benefit from it. The rest of us are simply waiting for it to become mainstream. If it gets adopted by Linux, it will not take too long before everyone gets it.