From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Jun 2 03:14:13 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6CFDA106564A for ; Sat, 2 Jun 2012 03:14:13 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dmagda@ee.ryerson.ca) Received: from eccles.ee.ryerson.ca (ee.ryerson.ca [141.117.1.2]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 274A58FC0C for ; Sat, 2 Jun 2012 03:14:12 +0000 (UTC) Received: from [10.0.1.10] (bas2-toronto09-1176130977.dsl.bell.ca [70.26.85.161]) (authenticated bits=0) by eccles.ee.ryerson.ca (8.14.4/8.14.4) with ESMTP id q523EAk8041489 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=AES128-SHA bits=128 verify=NO); Fri, 1 Jun 2012 23:14:10 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from dmagda@ee.ryerson.ca) Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v1278) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii From: David Magda In-Reply-To: <20120602010346.GA27660@isuckatdomains.members.linode.com> Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2012 23:14:10 -0400 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Message-Id: <4D744565-4073-485E-B769-82BE1F7E2C0A@ee.ryerson.ca> References: <20120601121555.GF5335@home.opsec.eu> <4FC8B67D.5090208@digsys.bg> <20120601131236.GJ8591@macbook.bluepipe.net> <20120602010346.GA27660@isuckatdomains.members.linode.com> To: Chris Nehren X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.1278) Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Why Are You NOT Using FreeBSD ? X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 02 Jun 2012 03:14:13 -0000 On Jun 1, 2012, at 21:03, Chris Nehren wrote: > You say your'e using ZVOLs but then recommend gluster for large > filesystems. I would like to take a moment to point out that one of = the > design goals of ZFS was to scale beyond the capabilities of current > hardware.=20 >=20 > What does gluster do that ZFS does not? I'm not trying to troll here, > but am genuinely curious about ZFS's shortfalls in one of the problem > domains it seeks to address. ZFS is for storing file systems on locally connected block devices. = Gluster is a network file system where data can be distributed over many = nodes. So ZFS can ensure that bits-on-disk stay safe through checksums and = mirroring / RAIDZ, while Gluster allows entire file servers to go = offline and the files are still accessible because you have a kind of = network-level RAID going on. This also helps in performance since = instead of clients pounding on one file server (as usually happens with = NFS), every write is sent to many data nodes so you're striping across = many network elements. Think of it as NFS on steroids. A competitive open source equivalent would be Lustre, while Isilon and = Panasas would probably be commercial alternatives (though they do NFS / = CIFS on the 'front-end' and the distributed "magic" occurs on a = 'back-end' network between the appliances). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlusterFS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lustre_(file_system)