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Tell me why I shouldn't use btrfs
(lemmy.zip)
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this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2024
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You shouldn't have abysmal performance with ZFS. Something must be up.
What's up is ZFS. It is solid but the architecture is very dated at this point.
There are about a hundred different settings I could try to change but at some point it is easier to go btrfs where it works out of the box.
What seems dated in its architecture? Last time I looked at it, it struck me as pretty modern compared to what's in use today.
It doesn't share well. Anytime anything IO heavy happens the system completely locks up.
That doesn't happen on other systems
That doesn't speak much of the architecture. Also it's really odd. Not denying what you're seeing is happening, just that it seems odd based on the setups I run with ZFS. My main server is in fact a shared machine that I use as a workstation and games along as a server. All works in parallel. I used to have a mirror, then a 4-disk RAIDz and now an 8-disk RAIDz2. I have multiple applications constantly using the pool. I don't notice any performance slowdowns on the desktop, or in-game when IO goes high. The only time I notice anything is when something like multiple Plex transcoders hit the CPU hard. Sequential performance is around 1.3GB/s which is limited by the data bus speeds (USB DAS boxes). Random performance is very good although I don't have any numbers out of my head. I'm using mostly WD Elements shucked disks and a couple of IronWolfs. No enterprise grade disks on this system.
I'm also not saying that you have to keep fucking around with it instead of going Btrfs. Simply adding another anecdote to the picture. If I had a serious problem like that and couldn't figure it out I'd be on LVMRAID+Ext4 which is what used prior to ZFS.
Yeah maybe my machines are cursed
I doubt that. Some options:
The list is endless. Maybe BTRFS is more tolerant of the problems you're facing, but that doesn't mean the problems are specific to ZFS. I recommend doing a bit of testing to see if everything looks fine on the HW side of things (memtest, smart tests, etc).
That is totally possible. I spent a month changing boards and CPUs to fix a curse on my main, unrelated to storage. In case you're curious.
@avidamoeba @possiblylinux127 Does your ZFS not print on Tuesdays? https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cupsys/+bug/255161/
I feel like this one flew right over my head. 🥹
Since most people with decently simple setups don't have the described problem likely somethings up with your setup.
Yes ifta old and yes it's complicated but it doesn't have to be to get a decent performance.
I used to run a mirror for a while with WD USB disks. Didn't notice any performance problems. Used Ubuntu LTS which has a built-in ZFS module, not DKMS, although I doubt there's performance problems stemming from DKMS.
I have been trying to get ZFS working well for months. Also I am not the only one having issues as I have seen lots of other posts about similar problems.