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Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2012 16:35:20 +0200
From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de>
To: Kaya Saman <kayasaman@gmail.com>
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Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Anyone using freebsd ZFS for large storage servers?
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On Fri, 1 Jun 2012 14:05:57 +0100, Kaya Saman wrote:
> It was my impression that ZFS doesn't actually format the disk as
> stores data as raw information on the hard disk directly rather then
> using an actual "file system" structure as such.

In worst... in ultra-worst abysmal inexpected exceptional
and unbelievable narrow cases, when you don't have or can't
access a backup (which you should have even when using ZFS),
and you _need_ to do some forensic analysis on disks, ZFS
seems to be a worse solution than UFS. On ZFS, you never
can predict where the data will go. Add several disks to
the problem, a combination of striping and mirroring
mechanisms, and you will see that things start to become
complicated.

I do _not_ want to try to claim a "ZFS inferiority due to
missing backups", but there may be occassions where (except
performance), low-level file system aspects of UFS might be
superior to using ZFS.




-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...