# Zfs



## SuperMiguel (Jun 4, 2009)

How stable is ZFS in 7.2? i mean should i wait for 8.0 to come out to use zfs or it is stable enough in 7.2


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## SirDice (Jun 4, 2009)

AFAIK quite a few people are using ZFS on 7.2 and are quite happy with it.


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## SuperMiguel (Jun 4, 2009)

so is safe to put my data on it?


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## thorwin (Jun 4, 2009)

SuperMiguel said:
			
		

> so is safe to put my data on it?


I think that depends on your personal level of paranoia 
I for myself have all my data on ZFS (running on 7.2) and not seen any problem yet


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## SuperMiguel (Jun 4, 2009)

k ill try it today and see how it goes


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## SuperMiguel (Jun 4, 2009)

is it secure to use freebsd 8.0?? or im better of waiting for its release in few months?


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## SirDice (Jun 4, 2009)

SuperMiguel said:
			
		

> is it secure to use freebsd 8.0?? or im better of waiting for its release in few months?



Just as secure as running 7.2. But if you want to run production I'd run it on a RELEASE.


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## SuperMiguel (Jun 4, 2009)

what u mean use it on a RELEASE?


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## DutchDaemon (Jun 4, 2009)

Run RELEASE if your server uptime/data integrity are important ("sitting duck").
Run STABLE if you're willing to take a little bit of risk now and then ("moving target").
Run CURRENT is you're willing and able to recover from a total crash ("dog fight").


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## SuperMiguel (Jun 4, 2009)

well i mean im going to use zfs 3 drives on a raidz and 1 drive backing up that zfs pool. So i guess if the os crashed i should be able to recover right? it wont damage my zfs pools?


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## DutchDaemon (Jun 4, 2009)

ZFS is part of the OS, so if ZFS crashes hard due to an inconsistency in a CURRENT snapshot, you may lose access to the entire ZFS subsystem or its tools unless you're able to use low-level rescue/fixit/liveCD-type tools to install a snapshot that does work or revert to a RELEASE/STABLE version. It's rare for a crash _that_ severe to happen, I believe, but you should be aware of that risk, esp. because ZFS itself is still under development.


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## SuperMiguel (Jun 4, 2009)

so im better off using opensolaris?


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## phoenix (Jun 4, 2009)

Use what you know best.  If you know OpenSolaris really well, then use ZFS on OpenSolaris.  If you know FreeBSD really well, then use ZFS on FreeBSD.

ZFSv6, the version of ZFS in FreeBSD 7.x, works quite nicely, especially on FreeBSD 7.2.  They've fixed a lot of the memory issues, and enabled a lot of auto-tuning for ZFS in FreeBSD 7.2.

FreeBSD 7.3 and 8.0 will ship with ZFSv13.  And that's where things in ZFS-land get really interesting.    You can play with ZFSv13 by installing FreeBSD 7.2, then doing a buildworld upgrade to FreeBSD 7-STABLE (using tag=RELENG_7).  However, if that all sounds like gobble-dee-gook, then you probably shouldn't try that.  

We're using FreeBSD 7.2 and ZFSv6 on two storage servers without any issues.  We were using ZFSv6 with FreeBSD 7.0 and 7.1 on these same systems, and had to do a lot of manual, hand-tuning to get them stable.  With 7.2, we've removed all that hand-tuning and let the system tune itself ... no issues in several weeks of running.

I also use FreeBSD 7.1 and ZFSv6 on my home server with just 3 drives in raidz1.  This is a 32-bit install with just 2 GB of RAM.  Had to do a lot of hand-tuning, but it's running really well.  Even replaced harddrives without any downtime.


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## SuperMiguel (Jun 5, 2009)

so in ur opinion with freebsd 7.2 should i use raidz or use the software integration for raid3


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## phoenix (Jun 5, 2009)

Personally, I'd use ZFS with raidz1.

I've had great experiences with gmirror(8) for software RAID 1, but I've never used the other GEOM RAID classes (gstripe(8), graid3(8), graid5(8)).


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## SuperMiguel (Jun 5, 2009)

and should i try using 7.2 with the v6 version? or should i try to update to v13 still using 7.2?


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## SuperMiguel (Jun 5, 2009)

well actually my freebsd is using zfs 13..


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