Linked by Rahul on Mon 13th Oct 2008 21:19 UTC
Linux Foundation is organizing a end user collaboration summit this week. A major topic will be a presentation on the new upcoming filesystems - Ext4 and Btrfs. Ted Tso, who is a Linux kernel filesystem developer on a sabbatical from IBM working for Linux Foundation for a year, has talked about the two-pronged approach for the Linux kernel, taking a incremental approach with Ext4 while simultaneously working on the next generation filesystem called btrfs. Read more for details.
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RE[2]: mistakes, assumptions, extrapolations
by kernpanic on Tue 14th Oct 2008 15:32
in reply to "RE: mistakes, assumptions, extrapolations"
Member since:2008-03-15
ZFS testing/debugging is a little wider than that as it is also being used on FreeBSD.
EDIT: It will be used on Mac OS too so the testing and use of ZFS is not even limited to Solaris/FreeBSD and you can bet the GUI/tools used to manage ZFS on Mac OS will more intuitive than that on Solaris (though there's nothing wrong with command line ZFS usage, its ridiculously easy).
Edited 2008-10-14 15:40 UTC
RE[2]: mistakes, assumptions, extrapolations
by Arun on Tue 14th Oct 2008 15:59
in reply to "RE: mistakes, assumptions, extrapolations"
Member since:2005-07-07
The biggest drawback we have with storage today is the storage devices. To maintain the large amounts of storage that many people are using Linux filesystems like XFS for today, and keep it reliable, we need to ditch disk drives with lots of mechanical moving parts and make data integrity a better part of the hardware. ZFS hasn't changed that fact at all and neither will btrfs.
Yes it has. XFS can't detect bad hardware like ZFS. Silent bit-rot and data corruption are common issues with hardware and most linux filesystems are piss poor at detecting those.
It does not matter how much you cram into hardware there will always be bugs and errata that can cause all sorts of nastiness. Claiming anything else is silly really.
In summary, no one is going to rush off their existing platform to get ZFS and btrfs (a select few might). Filesystems tend to change slowly, and adoption happens in the normal course of other things, normal iterative development and the price of upheaval. However, when compared with ZFS in Solaris, btrfs already has a head start even now in testing and development in that it is developed within a a kernel that runs on small ARM NAS boxes to very large arrays. Its code will also be scrutinised as such. ZFS isn't going to have that kind of free testing environment until people start doing the things with OpenSolaris and its source code that are currently done with Linux.
Again not True. ZFS has testing on a much wider platforms than you give it credit for, the BSDs and Apple are testing them so are many many people out side of Sun .
Edited 2008-10-14 16:01 UTC
RE[3]: mistakes, assumptions, extrapolations
by segedunum on Tue 14th Oct 2008 20:59
in reply to "RE[2]: mistakes, assumptions, extrapolations"
Member since:2005-07-06
Yes it has. XFS can't detect bad hardware like ZFS. Silent bit-rot and data corruption are common issues with hardware and most linux filesystems are piss poor at detecting those.
You miss the point sweetheart.............again. Detecting bad hardware is a problem of hardware and the current state of drive technology. Using ZFS isn't going to change that situation, and all anyone is finding out as a result of using ZFS are Solaris driver problems ;-).
Again not True. ZFS has testing on a much wider platforms than you give it credit for
Feel free to furnish me with a list.
the BSDs and Apple are testing them so are many many people out side of Sun .
Currently, that is x86 only and preferably 64-bit if you value your data. The problem for Sun though is that little if any code is flowing back in Sun's direction to help them maintain ZFS, so the quality control and shared development just isn't there. If you ever wanted to know why Linux uses the GPL, that's it.
RE[2]: mistakes, assumptions, extrapolations
by Phobos on Wed 15th Oct 2008 00:45
in reply to "RE: mistakes, assumptions, extrapolations"
Member since:2008-04-30
"1) file systems do not follow Moore's Law...
The article didn't say that it did, but Moore's Law has allowed people to do things with their storage devices where filesystems and storage containers like LVM and RAID haven't haven't quite kept up. That was the point the article was making. "
the article said:
The problem with contemporary file systems, Ts'o said, is that -- following Moore's Law -- file sizes have grown bigger, and disk drives have doubled in capacity every couple of years.
so, indeed, it did say FS followed Moore's Law... try proof reading next time.
Moore's Law was about the growth of the number of transistor on a CPU die... people mistakenly extrapolated that to everything, being a wrong assumption at it's root.
Hmmmmmmm, no. Some people want to believe that, but it isn't true I'm afraid. For the vast majority of storage uses in the world today, and when you look at reviews of OpenSolaris, no one is the slightest bit interested in ZFS or even aware that it exists.
So, you need proof, eh?
- Linus Torvalds:
And yes, maybe ZFS is worthwhile enough that I'm willing to go to the effort of trying to relicense the kernel. But quite frankly, I can almost guarantee that Sun won't release ZFS under the GPLv3 even if they release other parts.
http://lwn.net/Articles/237905/
- Zemlin's desperate and groundless attacks like:
With capabilities such as ZFS and DTrace, Sun is trying to compete based on minor features
while later stating:
Zemlin suggests that it should make ZFS and DTrace available under a Linux-compatible license.
(So minor he wants it on Linux so badly?... A bit contradictory, isn't it?)
http://www.nytimes.com/idg/IDG_852573C400693880002574CE00371FE1.htm...
- Apple: http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/technology/filesystem.html
- FreeBSD: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2007-April/07054...
- ZFS-on-FUSE: http://zfs-on-fuse.blogspot.com/
Not only that everybody wants it, it also has inspired other works like Mathew Dillon's HAMMER: http://kerneltrap.org/DragonFlyBSD/HAMMER_Filesystem_Design
While desktop users don't know/don't care about FSs, whenever they buy a Mac or install Solaris or FreeBSD, they will get ZFS, and they don't ever need to know about their existence... that's the point of it, FSs should be transparent to end users...
It makes certain things somewhat better, but Sun unfortunately don't have the userland tools that would expose ZFS as something remotely useful for the majority.
Heh... investigate a little before doing such assertions: http://blogs.sun.com/erwann/entry/zfs_on_the_desktop_zfs
In summary, no one is going to rush off their existing platform to get ZFS and btrfs (a select few might). Filesystems tend to change slowly, and adoption happens in the normal course of other things, normal iterative development and the price of upheaval.
I think my previous list can prove you wrong.
Sorry, but no it wouldn't. It has a great deal of useful features, but for a filesystem, it consumes far too much memory and CPU without some pretty damn serious tuning. It certainly isn't a general purpose filesystem you can throw any workload at.
You see, ZFS was designed taking in account the vast percentage of wasted CPU cycles on modern servers and computers in general... same thing that has motivated virtualization on all platforms, in modern times there is an excess of processing power, not lack of it like 20 years ago. The whole idea of hardware disk controllers to make disks arrays has become obsolete in many (save some very specialized) cases, thanks to ZFS... I invite you to read some papers and the ideas behind the Thumper X4500... a storage solution using ZFS
Even so, ZFS is no so massively resource intensive as you seem to imply, it just need a decent (not even great) configuration based on modern modern standards and it works like a charm...
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Member since:
2005-07-06
The article didn't say that it did, but Moore's Law has allowed people to do things with their storage devices where filesystems and storage containers like LVM and RAID haven't haven't quite kept up. That was the point the article was making.
The article didn't say what direction btrfs would take, but database usage is probably just one of their use cases. It sounds like you're already carving out a niche for ZFS.................
Hmmmmmmm, no. Some people want to believe that, but it isn't true I'm afraid. For the vast majority of storage uses in the world today, and when you look at reviews of OpenSolaris, no one is the slightest bit interested in ZFS or even aware that it exists. It makes certain things somewhat better, but Sun unfortunately don't have the userland tools that would expose ZFS as something remotely useful for the majority.
The biggest drawback we have with storage today is the storage devices. To maintain the large amounts of storage that many people are using Linux filesystems like XFS for today, and keep it reliable, we need to ditch disk drives with lots of mechanical moving parts and make data integrity a better part of the hardware. ZFS hasn't changed that fact at all and neither will btrfs.
In summary, no one is going to rush off their existing platform to get ZFS and btrfs (a select few might). Filesystems tend to change slowly, and adoption happens in the normal course of other things, normal iterative development and the price of upheaval. However, when compared with ZFS in Solaris, btrfs already has a head start even now in testing and development in that it is developed within a a kernel that runs on small ARM NAS boxes to very large arrays. Its code will also be scrutinised as such. ZFS isn't going to have that kind of free testing environment until people start doing the things with OpenSolaris and its source code that are currently done with Linux.