Concerns with BtrFS and ReFS
-
ReFS depends on you having a software RAID mirror of it for its recovery. On its own ReFS' safetey mechanisms are largest missing (same with ZFS.) But this means you are trapped using a software RAID system that itself is often considered to be not production ready (thereby making ReFS not production.)
-
@Obsolesce said in KVM and Back Ups:
@scottalanmiller said in KVM and Back Ups:
@Obsolesce said in KVM and Back Ups:
@scottalanmiller said in KVM and Back Ups:
@Obsolesce said in KVM and Back Ups:
@dafyre said in KVM and Back Ups:
@scottalanmiller said in KVM and Back Ups:
@dafyre said in KVM and Back Ups:
In my experience with it, it has often corrupted randomly and to the point that it's own snapshots are no help, nor are VMware Snapshots.
How could it correct VMware snapshots?
I guess it's more that BtrFS doesn't detect the corruption early enough and our VMware snapshot are nothing but snapshots of corrupt data... That's about the only way I can explain it.
Needs to catch up to ReFS
Um...... ReFS is known for lacking key features and being unstable and losing data. It's been ahead of ReFS all this time.
No
The Windows world is suffering from the "Cult of ZFS" applied to ReFS. ZFS fails just like anything else, but people often worship it and do crazy things becaue of it. ReFS was created for the purpose of "porting" that behaviour to Windows because people flock to it. ReFS hasn't garnered as much insanity as the ZFS crowd, but it's also not a mature, robust system like ZFS either, nor is it groundbreaking like ZFS was. ReFS is just a ZFS-wanna be without the tooling, reliability and maturity... so the "blind faith" people are much fewer, but they are out there. Right now ReFS isn't nearly as reliable as NTFS, often considered less reliable than people would like (although greatly improved and not a problem today). But unlike NTFS where people expect risk and plan for it, ReFS plans for no risk and just fails when something actually goes wrong.
ReFS is not ZFS. Don't confuse them. They are not swappable technologies.
I didn't, read what I wrote. ReFS is an attempt by MS to implement the ZFS-style FS for Windows to garner the same type of user base.
They are not swappable, ReFS is in no way actually competitive with ZFS.
-
@KOOLER on ReFS performance issues... https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/log-structured-file-systems-microsoft-refs-v2-investigation-part-1
-
I wouldn't call fringe cases the norm. You have those with anything and everything.
-
@Obsolesce said in KVM and Back Ups:
I wouldn't call fringe cases the norm. You have those with anything and everything.
That's good, I didn't and wouldn't call them the norm, either. The issues with ReFS is that it is used extremely rarely, and data loss cases are quite high (high enough that MS has recalled it in the past), and recovery tools are rare or don't exist (and are definitely not official.)
-
Remember, in storage, .01% data loss is too high to even think about calling production. Terms like "norm" have no place, because anything in the 51% range is too low to be usable statistically. All storage items need to be reliable to a point where concepts like "norm" are meaningless. This is what gets people with RAID. A business owner wants six nines of durability, but IT people will often point out that at least 51% of people don't lose data and treat that as similar to 99.9999% but they are mathematically ridiculously far apart.
-
Look at the kinds of issues Veeam currently sees with ReFS. These are not the kinds of issues one expects from a mature, reliable filesystem. Third party software can cause issues, but having to avoid AV because the FS can't handle it is pretty flaky behaviour.
-
@scottalanmiller said in KVM and Back Ups:
Look at the kinds of issues Veeam currently sees with ReFS. These are not the kinds of issues one expects from a mature, reliable filesystem. Third party software can cause issues, but having to avoid AV because the FS can't handle it is pretty flaky behaviour.
You mean disabling AV isn't a standard practice that everyone should employ?!
-
@dafyre said in KVM and Back Ups:
@scottalanmiller said in KVM and Back Ups:
@dafyre said in KVM and Back Ups:
In my experience with it, it has often corrupted randomly and to the point that it's own snapshots are no help, nor are VMware Snapshots.
How could it correct VMware snapshots?
I guess it's more that BtrFS doesn't detect the corruption early enough and our VMware snapshot are nothing but snapshots of corrupt data... That's about the only way I can explain it.
When you recovered and did investigation, you determined that the filesystem, not the data on the filesystem, was corrupted? No filesystem can detect the latter. How did you figure out that BtrFS was to "blame", and what did you move to to address the issue? Only ZFS would even offer an alternative.
-
@scottalanmiller said in KVM and Back Ups:
@KOOLER on ReFS performance issues... https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/log-structured-file-systems-microsoft-refs-v2-investigation-part-1
Wow they said Engineers set that up? Obviously not the IT type of Engineer. The whole thing is totally wrong, totally and completely unsupported in just about every way, and in no way supportive of what you tried to prove with it considering the given setup... Ä
-
@Obsolesce said in Concerns with BtrFS and ReFS:
@scottalanmiller said in KVM and Back Ups:
@KOOLER on ReFS performance issues... https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/log-structured-file-systems-microsoft-refs-v2-investigation-part-1
Wow they said Engineers set that up? Obviously not the IT type of Engineer. The whole thing is totally wrong, totally and completely unsupported in just about every way, and in no way supportive of what you tried to prove with it considering the given setup... Ä
How much special consideration does ReFS need to work? Obviously it can't require Windows Software RAID or it wouldn't be production ready in the slightest. What all special knowledge must people have to use a filesystem? And why does ReFS need to much but not NTFS? Just needing lots of special knowledge to use a FS seems like admission that it has a lot of problems.
-
@Obsolesce said in Concerns with BtrFS and ReFS:
Wow they said Engineers set that up? Obviously not the IT type of Engineer.
MS Storage / Kernel MVP.
-
We use EXT4 in our linux storage appliances - yet they seem to be pushing btrfs?
-
@MattSpeller said in Concerns with BtrFS and ReFS:
We use EXT4 in our linux storage appliances - yet they seem to be pushing btrfs?
Synology and ReadyNAS seem to push BtrFS. It makes things easier for them.
For production, everyone I know pushes XFS. Fast and reliable. Pretty much the only big factors in storage.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Concerns with BtrFS and ReFS:
For production, everyone I know pushes XFS. Fast and reliable. Pretty much the only big factors in storage.
Same
-
@scottalanmiller said in Concerns with BtrFS and ReFS:
@MattSpeller said in Concerns with BtrFS and ReFS:
We use EXT4 in our linux storage appliances - yet they seem to be pushing btrfs?
Synology and ReadyNAS seem to push BtrFS. It makes things easier for them.
For production, everyone I know pushes XFS. Fast and reliable. Pretty much the only big factors in storage.
More reliable than EXT4? We are going to replace our primary file storage NAS's and I just want something reliable that won't give me any (swear) headaches later
-
@MattSpeller said in Concerns with BtrFS and ReFS:
More reliable than EXT4?
Absolutely, specifically more reliable and faster (for most workloads) than EXT4. EXT4 is considered a desktop FS, while XFS is the server FS. EXT4 is tuned for the flexibility and small file sizes of a desktop. XFS for the performance, reliability, and planning of a server.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Concerns with BtrFS and ReFS:
@MattSpeller said in Concerns with BtrFS and ReFS:
More reliable than EXT4?
Absolutely, specifically more reliable and faster (for most workloads) than EXT4. EXT4 is considered a desktop FS, while XFS is the server FS. EXT4 is tuned for the flexibility and small file sizes of a desktop. XFS for the performance, reliability, and planning of a server.
Awesome - would you still suggest it if the storage was for ~4TB of 1mb documents accessed live and regularly and ~8TB+ of video?
-
@scottalanmiller said in Concerns with BtrFS and ReFS:
@MattSpeller said in Concerns with BtrFS and ReFS:
More reliable than EXT4?
Absolutely, specifically more reliable and faster (for most workloads) than EXT4. EXT4 is considered a desktop FS, while XFS is the server FS. EXT4 is tuned for the flexibility and small file sizes of a desktop. XFS for the performance, reliability, and planning of a server.
If your only choices were EXT4 or BtrFS - ext4 every time?
-
@MattSpeller said in Concerns with BtrFS and ReFS:
@scottalanmiller said in Concerns with BtrFS and ReFS:
@MattSpeller said in Concerns with BtrFS and ReFS:
More reliable than EXT4?
Absolutely, specifically more reliable and faster (for most workloads) than EXT4. EXT4 is considered a desktop FS, while XFS is the server FS. EXT4 is tuned for the flexibility and small file sizes of a desktop. XFS for the performance, reliability, and planning of a server.
If your only choices were EXT4 or BtrFS - ext4 every time?
Not every time, but generally. I'm not a fan of the ZFS and related filesystems in general (BtrFS, ReFS, etc.) They are full of gimics and rely on RAID integration for most of their touted features (and mostly it's the RAID, not the FS, doing the work - very misleading.) It's not that the ideas are all bad, but it makes the FS way too complex and confusing causing generally more issues than it solves. Also, XFS, EXT*, NTFS are built for speed and normal usage. ZFS and similar are build for resilience under specific use cases, massive storage, virtualization storage (nested filesystems) and stuff like that - niche case.
