ZFS vs BTRFS on Ars Technica

Really cleared up a few things for this article, I recommend you give it a read...

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/01/bitrot-and-atomic-cows-inside-next-gen-filesystems/

I would not say the article was ZFS vs BTRFS, more of "look I just discovered BTRFS and drank the koolaid!" It's all about BTRFS and in the end there is a short paragraph about it being experimental, while repeating the word stable several times. There is no positive statement on any alternative. On page 1 he attacks RAID5 without saying what RAID5 implementation.  Page 2 say will compare directly to ZFS and only covers features both have, while throwing LVM under the bus. Page 3 is just unique features of BTRFS, but some of them are not actually unique to BTRFS.

BTRFS is indeed a future filesystem with an extremely nice feature list, but a work in progress.

PS: Even his bitrot example is a bit off. Single bit errors are corrected by even 512byte sector drives, and 4k drives are even better. Sectors have ECC, not parity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Format

I would not say the article was ZFS vs BTRFS, more of "look I just discovered BTRFS and drank the koolaid!" It's all about BTRFS and in the end there is a short paragraph about it being experimental, while repeating the word stable several times. There is no positive statement on any alternative. On page 1 he attacks RAID5 without saying what RAID5 implementation.  Page 2 say will compare directly to ZFS and only covers features both have, while throwing LVM under the bus. Page 3 is just unique features of BTRFS, but some of them are not actually unique to BTRFS.

 

BTRFS is indeed a future filesystem with an extremely nice feature list, but a work in progress.

 

PS: Even his bitrot example is a bit off. Single bit errors are corrected by even 512byte sector drives, and 4k drives are even better. Sectors have ECC, not parity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Format

BTRFS like ZFS is a file system and raid build into one.

BTRFS is stable and has been for a long time if you run it without RAID or RAID 0,1 or 10. It's RAID 5/6 that isn't considered stable yet.

Most Distros already have it. openSUSE 13.1 it's the default unless you tell it otherwise and Fedora 21 it will probably be the default File System too. I suspect you will see the same with Ubuntu, Manjaro, Linux Mint, etc. too.

BTW - unRAID has had BTRFS enabled since one the early 5.0 Release Candidates. ReiserFS is the default though. 

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BTW - unRAID has had BTRFS enabled since one the early 5.0 Release Candidates. ReiserFS is the default though.

i thought unraid's BTRFS was only available for the cache drive ... are you saying you could replace reiserfs with btrfs for a given array ?

Most Distros already have it. openSUSE 13.1 it's the default unless you tell it otherwise and Fedora 21 it will probably be the default File System too. I suspect you will see the same with Ubuntu, Manjaro, Linux Mint, etc. too.

You sure about that?

http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:13.1

"Much effort was put in testing openSUSE 13.1, with improvements to our automated openQA testing tool, a global bug fixing hackathon and more. The btrfs file system has received a serious workout and while not default, is considered stable for everyday usage. This release has been selected for Evergreen support extending its life cycle to 3 years".

The author of the article made a point of describing his use of daily builds when using BTRFS.

"I began my journey with btrfs using the very latest kernel in Ubuntu's pipeline, and I ended up jumping two steps beyond that to one in the dailies". He didn't jump "way outside of my normal comfort zone" for no reason. He just knew a puff piece can not include the ugly side.

yes, BTRFS is included in just about any distro as it is a very big deal. Default, not so much... unless no RAID, but as you said, it is meant to include RAID like ZFS. For the whole bag of nuts, BTRFS has a bit to go.

I'm on the list of people wanting it to stabilize, but there is more work to do.

You sure about that?

Do an install of openSUSE... The main screen is a checkbox for BTRFS and not any other File System. If you want a separate file system, you have to go create it on your own in partition manager. If you don't select BTRFS it "defaults" to installing using LVM.

The author of the article made a point of describing his use of daily builds when using BTRFS.

"I began my journey with btrfs using the very latest kernel in Ubuntu's pipeline, and I ended up jumping two steps beyond that to one in the dailies". He didn't jump "way outside of my normal comfort zone" for no reason. He just knew a puff piece can not include the ugly side.

BTRFS File System is stable. BTRFS RAID 0, 1 or 10 is stable. It's only BTRFS RAID 5/6 that is unstable and that is in the userspace tools anyway (which is where you see most of the BTRFS updates).

Arch - Stable

Debian - Stable

openSUSE - Stable

Gentoo - Stable

Ubuntu - Stable

SLES - Stable

I could go on but google and you will see all the distros who say it's stable and in which version / kernel.

If he were to update the Linux Kernel (BTRFS) along with the BTRFS userspace tools at the same time... He wouldn't have had the problems.

Going forward this isn't a problem. The BTRFS userspace tools are now updated in the Linux Kernel starting with 3.13. Before... Each Linux Distro had to download the userspace tools from GIT and provide a package for each new Linux Kernel.

What that idiot did... Installed Linux Mainline and probably used the btrfs-progs user-space utilities package (in Ubuntu or whatever he was using) which is going to cause some problems. In Linux Kernel 3.12 they did a TON of updates to BTRFS and the tools. Ubuntu is still on Linux Kernel 3.10 and so are their BTRFS tools. No wonder he had issues and claiming it isn't stable.

The article is crap, he made a million errors aside from this one so I wouldn't take his "word" as the truth and say BTRFS is unstable. Their are a TON of Server Distros and even SLES (with their ass / checkbook on the line) who say it is.