[CentOS] ZFS on Linux in production?

[Lists]

On 10/24/2013 02:47 PM, SilverTip257 wrote:
> You didn't mention XFS.
> Just curious if you considered it or not.

Most definitely. There are a few features that I'm looking for:

1) MOST IMPORTANT: STABLE!

2) The ability to make the partition  bigger by adding drives with very 
minimal/no downtime.

3) The ability to remove an older, (smaller) drive or drives in order to 
replace with larger capacity drives without downtime or having to copy 
over all the files manually.

4) The ability to create snapshots with no downtime.

5) The ability to synchronize snapshots quickly and without having to 
scan every single file. (backups)

6) Reasonable failure mode. Things *do* go south sometimes. Simple is 
better, especially when it's simpler for the (typically highly stressed) 
administrator.

7) Big. Basically all filesystems in question can handle our size 
requirements. We might hit a 100 TB  partition in the next 5 years.

I think ZFS and BTRFS are the only candidates that claim to do all the 
above. Btrfs seems to have been "stable in a year or so" for as long as 
I could keep a straight face around the word "Gigabyte", so it's a 
non-starter at this point.

LVM2/Ext4 can do much of the above. However, horror stories abound, 
particularly around very large volumes. Also, LVM2 can be terrible in 
failure situations.

XFS does snapshots, but don't you have to freeze the volume first? 
Xfsrestore looks interesting for backups, though I don't know if there's 
a consistent "freeze point". (what about ongoing writes?) Not sure about 
removing HDDs in a volume with XFS.

Not as sure about ZFS' stability on Linux (those who run direct Unix 
derivatives seem to rave about it) and failure modes.