Slashdot Mirror
Running ZFS Natively On Linux Slower Than Btrfs
An anonymous reader writes "It's been known that ZFS is coming to Linux in the form of a native kernel module done by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and KQ Infotech. The ZFS module is still in closed testing on KQ infotech's side (but LLNL's ZFS code is publicly available), and now Phoronix has tried out the ZFS file-system on Linux and carried out some tests. ZFS on Linux via this native module is much faster than using ZFS-FUSE, but the Solaris file-system in most areas is not nearly as fast as EXT4, Btrfs, or XFS."
Who would have thought that a first-release Beta kernel module would not run as fast or be as reliable as the stable implementation for other operating systems, or the stables on Linux?
Thirty four characters live here.
ext2 is faster than ext3, simply because it does less. ZFS has many, many features most other FS don't have but they do come at a price.
I can write the fastest file system around, assuming you don't put much weight on the whole 'being able to read the data back' thingie.
- These characters were randomly selected.
On similar hardware of course.
It occurs to me that ZFS does a lot more than EXT4 and Btrfs too.
Sooo, are any of those features I'd particularly care about?
Ext4 seems to do all my simple needs (and those of my services) require.
You can't call it "the Solaris file-system". You can say that the Linux native implementation of ZFS (a Linux file-system) is slower than BTRFS, though.
And, what does it matter it to be fast if it's not reliable? You can save your stuff in /dev/null quite fast too!
http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-fsdevel/msg35235.html
So, because ext3 implementations on other OSes are slow, that means ext3 is slow? Got it.
Try running ZFS on FreeBSD, or better yet, on the original OS: Solaris.
- oZ
// i am here.
What features does ZFS have that ext4 doesnt? Its a simple question, but you had to act like an ass. Good job.
If I have a bicycle that I ride everywhere, and never seen nor heard of a car. I would not know what a car could do for me, would I? SO if someone comes along and says, Hey cars are cool, they are just a little more expensive. I would ask something like.. What features does a car have over a bicycle.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
Snapshots.
And I don't just mean any snapshots.
Done right, like in ZFS, they are fast.
Faster than BSD's UFS snapshots, faster than using LVM's fs-agnostic snapshots. For people who need them, they're great.
Picking on ZFS for being slow when ported to a different OS and running on atypical hardware is like criticizing Stephen Hawking for being a poor juggler. It's focussing on the wrong thing. The goals of ZFS are, in no particular order:
- Scalability to enormous numbers of devices
- Highly assured data integrity via checksumming
- Fault tolerance via redundancy
- Manageability/usability features (i.e., snapshots) that conventional file systems simply don't have
Oh, and if it's fast, well, that's gravy.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Thanks for replying like a jerk, that really helps us all out. Nobody is going to simply transition to a new way of doing things just because it's new, they need to know what they'll get from the new way that makes the transition worthwhile.
BTRFS can probably never be shipped with any other major OS other than linux
It's not BTRFS's fault that other operating systems use licenses with more restrictions than Linux.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
BREAKING NEWS! Journaling filesystems with write caching, including the ever-popular NTFS, are vulnerable to data loss in sudden power failures! Total noobs were left with no idea how to go about fixing the problem.
"If only there were some way to run a check on the file system and perform automatic repairs! OH GOD WHAT DO I DO!?!?!" one commented.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Unless, of course, the files you're storing are already compressed, in that case it's just a pure loss. As with many things, what's "best" is strongly dependent on what you want to do with it.