Facebook To Begin Deploying Btrfs

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Facebook To Begin Deploying Btrfs

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 27, 2014 @06:01AM from the so-rich-and-smooth dept.

An anonymous reader writes "After hiring the lead Btrfs developers and Linux kernel block maintainers last year, Facebook is beginning trial deployments of Btrfs. Facebook will start using the next-generation file-system within their web-tier and they will be among the first major public deployments of Btrfs."

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Give me a big plate of beans by Anonymous Coward · 2014-03-27 06:05 · Score: 4, Funny

and I'll start deploying all kinds of btrfs.
How about real problems by i+kan+reed · 2014-03-27 06:07 · Score: 5, Funny

When are they going to make the users of their website tolerable human beings instead of insane caricatures designed to make you lose all faith in humanity?
1. Re:How about real problems by Anonymous Coward · 2014-03-27 06:11 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Bad news, those are the real human beings. The tolerable ones you want to rule the place are actually marketing sockpuppets.
2. Re:How about real problems by TheSpinningBrain · 2014-03-27 06:12 · Score: 2
  
  Unfortunately, I believe that is the role of the user. I don't think that Facebook would try re-routing users to code.org.
3. Re:How about real problems by gstoddart · 2014-03-27 06:45 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  When are they going to make the users of their website tolerable human beings instead of insane caricatures designed to make you lose all faith in humanity?
  And ... this is different from Slashdot, how? ;-)
  
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4. Re:How about real problems by serviscope_minor · 2014-03-27 07:05 · Score: 2
  
  And ... this is different from Slashdot, how? ;-)
  Slashdot has more jokes about beowulf clusters. And if you act like a jerk, someone will call you an insenstitve clod.
  
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  SJW n. One who posts facts.
5. Re:How about real problems by kodomo · 2014-03-27 07:36 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Can you explain it again, but using a car analogy?
6. Re:How about real problems by amiga3D · 2014-03-27 08:13 · Score: 2
  
  The jokes here are better.
I guess Minecraft will stop using it by barlevg · 2014-03-27 06:11 · Score: 3, Funny

If Facebook likes something, it must be evil.
1. Re:I guess Minecraft will stop using it by vux984 · 2014-03-27 06:17 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  If Facebook likes something, it must be evil.
  If facebook buys something outright, it will be turned to social-shit. FTFY.
  If I happen to share Zuckershits taste in coffee makers, that won't affect my enjoyment of the coffee maker. On the other hand, if Facebook buys out my favorite coffee maker... then yeah, my next coffee maker will be a brand that doesn't try and change my status to "making facebook coffee" everytime I brew a cup. (Well... I don't have a facebook account so that's moot... although I expect a facebook coffeemaker would require one before allowing coffee to be brewed so... there's that.)
2. Re:I guess Minecraft will stop using it by vux984 · 2014-03-27 06:29 · Score: 2
  
  Both Instagram and Whats App are working as they originally did prior to their acquisition.
  Well except where everything you do is fed into facebook's data mining backend, and its only a matter of time before they add a back channel to start showing you facebook ads.
  They will monetize it. Its just a matter of time.
3. Re:I guess Minecraft will stop using it by vux984 · 2014-03-27 06:32 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Well they "bought out" (that is, "hired") the lead Btrfs developers, so how do you count that?
  I still see it as a jointly developed GPL project, that facebook cannot own.
4. Re:I guess Minecraft will stop using it by rev0lt · 2014-03-27 09:42 · Score: 2
  
  Not only the geeks, but also big corps. And everyone that actually cares about data integrity.
Sounds about right by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2014-03-27 06:13 · Score: 5, Funny

> Btrfs
tl;dr, I assume this is a button to let you tag people as a butterface?

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Thanks, Facebook! by bill_mcgonigle · 2014-03-27 06:16 · Score: 3, Insightful

FB admins - thank you for paying the developers for the open source work they do. I've been using flashcache with great success in one deployment for almost two years now and am looking to start with hhvm. I didn't even know about the block work.
Obviously kudos to the developers too for spending valuable years on it as well.

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Trial by fire... by mlts · 2014-03-27 06:19 · Score: 3, Insightful

IMHO, this is a very good thing. btrfs doesn't have as many capabilities that ZFS or Storage Spaces/ReFS possesses.
However, it is finally time that Linux has a filesystem that supports the latest/greatest enterprise features (deduplication and the ability to combat bit rot.)
Realistically, it would be nice to see the native (not FUSE based) code from OpenZFS be included as an alternative, but the CDDL/GPL conflicts likely will make this a no-go.
1. Re:Trial by fire... by mcrbids · 2014-03-27 06:34 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Realistically, it would be nice to see the native (not FUSE based) code from OpenZFS be included as an alternative, but the CDDL/GPL conflicts likely will make this a no-go.
  Well, isn't this your lucky day, then? ZFS on Linux works now, today, without the use of FUSE. Nothing about the license conflicts prohibits use or distribution, just distribution together. I have ZFS/Linux servers in production right now, and they are quite stable. Starting with a vanilla install of CentOS, the instructions are roughly:
  1) Install the yum repo file.
  2) yum Install kernel-devel zfs
  3) Start the ZFS service.
  4) Start creating ZFS volumes....
  A reboot isn't typically necessary... (though not a bad idea)
  
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2. Re:Trial by fire... by unixisc · 2014-03-27 07:37 · Score: 2
  
  If FB needed ZFS, wouldn't they have gone for FreeBSD? The cleanest up to date OS that supports this file system? If they're going w/ BTRFS, they might as well go w/ Linux.
3. Re:Trial by fire... by UnknownSoldier · 2014-03-27 07:54 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  > Personally I would be *EXTREMELY* wary of running ZFS on Linux.
  So basically you are making an decision based on emotion instead of actual facts??
  Try reading the FAQ next time:
  http://zfsonlinux.org/faq.html...
4. Re:Trial by fire... by SirMasterboy · 2014-03-27 08:26 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Check out: http://open-zfs.org/wiki/Main_...
  http://dtrace.org/blogs/ahl/20...
  ZoL is very active and very up-to-date. All the versions and compatibility is in sync with Illumos (the main source of OpenZFS) and FreeBSD. You can create and move zpools between these 3 platforms seamlessly.
  2 of the main founders and creators of ZFS itself (who used to work for Oracle and wrote ZFS) who now work for Delphix and continue to improve OpenZFS (started with the last open release of Oracle ZFS) in Illumos and have actually made it better than the now closed Oracle ZFS.
  See how OpenZFS is actually better than Oracle ZFS now:
  http://dtrace.org/blogs/ahl/20...
  Actively adding new features: https://github.com/zfsonlinux/... (Largeblock support to match the newer Oracle ZFS)
  Etc...
  Maybe if we pray to the ZFS gods Matthew will start implementing block pointer rewrite some day!
  Anyways, OpenZFS is very active and kicking, and that includes the Linux port.
5. Re:Trial by fire... by jxander · 2014-03-27 08:34 · Score: 2
  
  A reboot isn't typically necessary... (though not a bad idea)
  What is this? Windows?
  
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6. Re:Trial by fire... by s.petry · 2014-03-27 09:00 · Score: 2
  
  Well, since ZFS is available for Linux I had to wonder why there would be people making a fuss about btrfs. You bring up licensing which is an issue, and I'm guessing Oracle did not help the license issues, or possibly made the license issues worse.
  
  --
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And facebook will be burnt by sl3xd · 2014-03-27 06:58 · Score: 2

Not that anybody'll really notice, but I have a feeling that Facebook's backup and recovery system is queuing up for a stress test.
Having lost data with BTRFS multiple times on my disk array (as recently as last month), I have no confidence in it. The best thing I can say about btrfs is is that it was able to tell me that it had lost data. Not many filesystems do that; but ZFS on Linux has been rock solid for years, and not only tells me if data has been lost, but actually preserves the data as well.

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1. Re:And facebook will be burnt by mlts · 2014-03-27 07:16 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  You are not the only person who have reported data loss on btrfs. Normally I wouldn't worry about Linux filesystems (even ext4 became rock solid after a while.) However, I worry about what I hear from people who use btrfs.
  One concern is that a filesystem can't check for bit rot by itself. True bit rot checking requires at least some working with the LVM layer to check CRCs, find a damaged sector and fix it. I've read that btrfs can catch some bitrot issues, (and please correct me if wrong), but it can't catch/correct anywhere near as much as ZFS or Storage Spaces + ReFS can. btrfs also uses a 32 bit CRC, rather than a 64 bit one.
  I'm hoping that Facebook's coders can find the issues with btrfs and squash them. There are not many companies with the sheer server use of FB, and if they can get it working solidly, btrfs should be more than ready for prime time for everyone else.
Btrfs definition by PHPNerd · 2014-03-27 07:00 · Score: 4, Informative

From wikipedia: Btrfs (B-tree file system) is a GPL-licensed experimental copy-on-write file system for Linux. (I'm sure a lot of people were wondering what it is, since TFA doesn't say)
1. Re:Btrfs definition by dargaud · 2014-03-27 07:53 · Score: 2
  
  I hope the /. wannabes that'll spring up when beta goes into production will enforce the explicit declaration of all acronyms in the summary...
  
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Re:btrfs? by UnknownSoldier · 2014-03-27 08:05 · Score: 4, Interesting

LOL, nice! Or ...
* Broken To Read Free Space
* Broken Treatment Reading Free Space
btrfs FAQ 4.4 - 4.8
* 4.4 Why does df show incorrect free space for my RAID volume?
* 4.5 Aaargh! My filesystem is full, and I've put almost nothing into it!
* 4.6 Why are there so many ways to check the amount of free space?
* 4.6.1 Raw disk usage
* 4.6.2 Actual data
* 4.7 Why is free space so complicated?
* 4.8 Why is there so much space overhead?
https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/...
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Re:Unfortunately, the GPL-compatible ZFS ship has by rev0lt · 2014-03-27 09:45 · Score: 3, Informative

Larry, really? The guy from the same company who actually STARTED btrfs? That's right, btrfs *is* an Oracle project. Some other big names came onboard later on, but it started there... Check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...