From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Jan 4 18:12:10 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 720AF16A418; Fri, 4 Jan 2008 18:12:10 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from brooks@lor.one-eyed-alien.net) Received: from lor.one-eyed-alien.net (cl-162.ewr-01.us.sixxs.net [IPv6:2001:4830:1200:a1::2]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 01A0C13C467; Fri, 4 Jan 2008 18:12:09 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from brooks@lor.one-eyed-alien.net) Received: from lor.one-eyed-alien.net (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by lor.one-eyed-alien.net (8.14.1/8.13.8) with ESMTP id m04IC9Qv044778; Fri, 4 Jan 2008 12:12:09 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from brooks@lor.one-eyed-alien.net) Received: (from brooks@localhost) by lor.one-eyed-alien.net (8.14.1/8.13.8/Submit) id m04IC9kd044777; Fri, 4 Jan 2008 12:12:09 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from brooks) Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2008 12:12:09 -0600 From: Brooks Davis To: Ivan Voras Message-ID: <20080104181208.GE42835@lor.one-eyed-alien.net> References: <20080104163352.GA42835@lor.one-eyed-alien.net> <9bbcef730801040958t36e48c9fjd0fbfabd49b08b97@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="XuV1QlJbYrcVoo+x" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <9bbcef730801040958t36e48c9fjd0fbfabd49b08b97@mail.gmail.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.16 (2007-06-09) X-Greylist: Sender IP whitelisted, not delayed by milter-greylist-3.0 (lor.one-eyed-alien.net [127.0.0.1]); Fri, 04 Jan 2008 12:12:09 -0600 (CST) Cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: When will ZFS become stable? X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 04 Jan 2008 18:12:10 -0000 --XuV1QlJbYrcVoo+x Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Fri, Jan 04, 2008 at 06:58:32PM +0100, Ivan Voras wrote: > On 04/01/2008, Brooks Davis wrote: > > On Fri, Jan 04, 2008 at 12:42:28PM +0100, Ivan Voras wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > > > As far as I know about the details of implementation and what would it > > > take to fix the problems, is it safe to assume ZFS will never become > > > stable during 7.x lifetime? > > > > I suppose that depends what you mean by stable. >=20 > My yardstick is currently "when a month goes by without anyone > complaining it crashed on him" :) I'm not sure any file system we support meets that criteria... > >It seems stable enough > > for a number of applications today. >=20 > This number is not so large. It seems to be easily crashed by rsync, > for example (speaking from my own experience, and also some of my > colleagues). I saw those crashes early one, but that's 90% of what the mirror server I'm running does and I'm not seeing them any more. I won't argue everything is fixed, but ZFS seems much more stable than it was. > > It's possible some of > > the issues of memory requirements won't be fixable in 7.x, but I don't > > think that's a given. >=20 > I listened to some of Pawel's talks and devsummit brainstormings and I > get the feeling *none* of the problems can be fixed in 7.x, especially > on i386. I'm just asking for more official confirmation. My understanding is that ZFS will never be a great choice on any 32-bit architecture without major changes Sun probably isn't interested in making. I think many of the problems people are reporting stem from that. > This is not a trivial question, since it involves deploying systems to > be maintained some years into the future - if ZFS will become stable > relatively shortly, it might be worth putting up with crashes, but if > not, there will be no near-future deployments of it. I don't think anyone is naive enough to say everything will be perfect by any given date. Reality doesn't work that way. People looking to deploy ZFS now will need to tolerate a certain amount of risk since it's never been part of a FreeBSD release (and it's still quite new even in Solaris). Issues being unfixable in 7.x are one of those risks, but that's always the case. -- Brooks --XuV1QlJbYrcVoo+x Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQFHfnb4XY6L6fI4GtQRAtx1AKDiNM7zC3HA80cWMEU52oSZN4JJJQCgkRw6 8HAXT16t60UZ9Lc+hV051JE= =jo9L -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --XuV1QlJbYrcVoo+x--