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ZFS honesty

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To: Kris Kennaway <kris@...>
Cc: <freebsd-current@...>, Ivan Voras <ivoras@...>
Subject: ZFS honesty
Date: Sunday, January 6, 2008 - 5:00 pm

Kris Kennaway wrote:

So, let's be honest here.  ZFS is simply unreliable on FreeBSD/i386.
There are things that you can do mitigate the problems, and in certain
well controlled environments you might be able to make it work well
enough for your needs.  But as a general rule, don't expect it to work
reliably, period.  This is backed up by Sun's own recommendation to not
run it on 32-bit Solaris.

But let's also be honest about ZFS in the 64-bit world.  There is ample
evidence that ZFS basically wants to grow unbounded in proportion to the
workload that you give it.  Indeed, even Sun recommends basically
throwing more RAM at most problems.  Again, tuning is often needed, and
I think it's fair to say that it can't be expected to work on arbitrary
workloads out of the box.

Now, what about the other problems that have been reported in this
thread by Ivan and others?  I don't think that it can be said that the
only problem that ZFS has is with memory.  Unfortunately, it looks like
these "other" problems aren't well quantified, so I think that they are
being unfairly dismissed.  But at the same time, maybe these other
problems are rare and unique enough that they represent very special
cases that won't be encountered by most people.  But it also tells me
that ZFS is still immature, at least in FreeBSD.

The universal need for tuning combined with the poorly understood
problem reports tells me that administrators considering ZFS should
expect to spend a fair amount of timing testing and tuning.  Don't
expect it to work out of the box for your situation.  That's not to
say that it's useless; there are certainly many people who can attest to
it working well for them.  Just be prepared to spend time and possibly
money making it work, and be willing to provide good problem reports for
any non-memory related problems that you encounter.

Scott
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Messages in current thread:
When will ZFS become stable?, Ivan Voras, (Fri Jan 4, 7:42 am)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Dag-Erling Smørgrav, (Mon Jan 7, 10:04 am)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Ivan Voras, (Mon Jan 7, 10:37 am)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Andrew Thompson, (Mon Jan 7, 4:46 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Pawel Jakub Dawidek, (Mon Jan 7, 5:59 am)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Ivan Voras, (Mon Jan 7, 6:30 am)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Oliver Fromme, (Tue Jan 8, 1:58 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Mark Powell, (Sat Jan 12, 5:45 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Dag-Erling Smørgrav, (Tue Jan 8, 2:24 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Scot Hetzel, (Wed Jan 9, 1:39 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Ivan Voras, (Tue Jan 8, 7:16 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Dan Nelson, (Wed Jan 9, 1:45 am)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Steve Kargl, (Tue Jan 8, 1:59 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Igor Mozolevsky, (Mon Jan 7, 9:17 am)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Robert Watson, (Sun Jan 6, 11:36 am)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Ivan Voras, (Sun Jan 6, 12:47 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Kris Kennaway, (Sun Jan 6, 1:20 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Ivan Voras, (Sun Jan 6, 1:36 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Claus Guttesen, (Sun Jan 6, 4:00 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Kris Kennaway, (Sun Jan 6, 2:10 pm)
ZFS honesty, Scott Long, (Sun Jan 6, 5:00 pm)
Re: ZFS honesty, 韓家標 Bill Hacker, (Sun Jan 6, 6:20 pm)
Re: ZFS honesty, Ivan Voras, (Sun Jan 6, 6:43 pm)
Re: ZFS honesty, 韓家標 Bill Hacker, (Sun Jan 6, 6:58 pm)
Re: ZFS honesty, Alexandre "Sunny" Kovalenko..., (Sun Jan 6, 8:03 pm)
Re: ZFS honesty, 韓家標 Bill Hacker, (Sun Jan 6, 10:29 pm)
Re: ZFS honesty, Andrew Gallatin, (Wed Jan 9, 9:23 am)
Re: ZFS honesty, Alexandre "Sunny" Kovalenko..., (Wed Jan 9, 10:55 am)
Re: ZFS honesty, Andrew Gallatin, (Wed Jan 9, 11:36 am)
Re: ZFS honesty, Alexandre Biancalana, (Mon Jan 7, 11:23 am)
Re: ZFS honesty, Kris Kennaway, (Sun Jan 6, 5:32 pm)
Re: ZFS honesty, Scott Long, (Sun Jan 6, 5:54 pm)
Re: ZFS honesty, Ivan Voras, (Sun Jan 6, 6:33 pm)
Re: ZFS honesty, Ivan Voras, (Sun Jan 6, 9:16 pm)
Re: ZFS honesty, 韓家標 Bill Hacker, (Sun Jan 6, 6:32 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Robert Watson, (Sun Jan 6, 1:08 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Darren Reed, (Tue Jan 22, 11:09 am)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Ivan Voras, (Sun Jan 6, 1:28 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Kris Kennaway, (Sun Jan 6, 1:43 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Ivan Voras, (Sun Jan 6, 2:00 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Kris Kennaway, (Sun Jan 6, 2:09 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Ivan Voras, (Sun Jan 6, 2:49 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Brooks Davis, (Fri Jan 4, 12:33 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Ivan Voras, (Fri Jan 4, 1:58 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Peter Schuller, (Sun Jan 6, 5:51 am)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Ivan Voras, (Sun Jan 6, 8:58 am)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Kris Kennaway, (Sun Jan 6, 9:07 am)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Henri Hennebert, (Sun Jan 6, 11:48 am)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Kris Kennaway, (Sun Jan 6, 12:03 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Henri Hennebert, (Sun Jan 6, 12:47 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Kris Kennaway, (Sun Jan 6, 1:13 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Maciej Suszko, (Sun Jan 6, 9:46 am)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Kris Kennaway, (Sun Jan 6, 11:46 am)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Maciej Suszko, (Sun Jan 6, 12:05 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Kris Kennaway, (Sun Jan 6, 12:22 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Maciej Suszko, (Sun Jan 6, 3:56 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Ivan Voras, (Sun Jan 6, 9:50 am)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Kris Kennaway, (Sun Jan 6, 10:27 am)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Ivan Voras, (Sun Jan 6, 10:51 am)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Kris Kennaway, (Sun Jan 6, 11:08 am)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Ivan Voras, (Sun Jan 6, 12:45 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Kris Kennaway, (Sun Jan 6, 1:12 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Gary Corcoran, (Sun Jan 6, 2:48 pm)
Should we simply disallow ZFS on FreeBSD/i386?, Maxim Sobolev, (Sun Jan 6, 5:56 pm)
Re: Should we simply disallow ZFS on FreeBSD/i386?, Joao Barros, (Mon Jan 7, 10:52 am)
Re: Should we simply disallow ZFS on FreeBSD/i386?, Peter Schuller, (Mon Jan 7, 1:06 pm)
Re: Should we simply disallow ZFS on FreeBSD/i386?, Alexander Kabaev, (Mon Jan 7, 6:47 pm)
Re: Should we simply disallow ZFS on FreeBSD/i386?, Christian Walther, (Mon Jan 7, 3:10 am)
Re: Should we simply disallow ZFS on FreeBSD/i386?, Igor Mozolevsky, (Mon Jan 7, 4:20 am)
Re: Should we simply disallow ZFS on FreeBSD/i386?, Christian Walther, (Mon Jan 7, 4:51 am)
Re: Should we simply disallow ZFS on FreeBSD/i386?, Erich Dollansky, (Sun Jan 6, 7:39 pm)
Re: Should we simply disallow ZFS on FreeBSD/i386?, Oliver Fromme, (Tue Jan 8, 1:51 pm)
Re: Should we simply disallow ZFS on FreeBSD/i386?, Adam McDougall, (Sun Jan 6, 7:32 pm)
Re: Should we simply disallow ZFS on FreeBSD/i386?, David Taylor, (Tue Jan 8, 3:56 am)
Re: Should we simply disallow ZFS on FreeBSD/i386?, Maxim Sobolev, (Sun Jan 6, 8:58 pm)
Re: Should we simply disallow ZFS on FreeBSD/i386?, Bernd Walter, (Mon Jan 7, 11:36 am)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Ivan Voras, (Sun Jan 6, 1:20 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Kris Kennaway, (Sun Jan 6, 1:34 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Vadim Goncharov, (Sun Jan 6, 4:56 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Kris Kennaway, (Sun Jan 6, 5:42 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Robert Watson, (Sun Jan 6, 6:33 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Vadim Goncharov, (Mon Jan 7, 11:16 am)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Robert Watson, (Mon Jan 7, 11:39 am)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Vadim Goncharov, (Mon Jan 7, 7:28 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Robert Watson, (Mon Jan 7, 7:39 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Vadim Goncharov, (Tue Jan 8, 2:58 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Robert Watson, (Tue Jan 8, 3:22 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Ivan Voras, (Sun Jan 6, 6:45 pm)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Robert Watson, (Tue Jan 8, 5:19 am)
Re: When will ZFS become stable?, Brooks Davis, (Fri Jan 4, 2:12 pm)
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