Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2022 14:57:15 -0600 From: Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com> To: Freebsd Questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Zfs Guide Message-ID: <20221105144351314715152@bob.proulx.com> In-Reply-To: <20221105191506.ufa4nexieim3dhzu@freebsd> References: <20221105191506.ufa4nexieim3dhzu@freebsd>
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Joe B wrote: > Sorry for all the questions but i want to start somehwere, the forums > take a while for me to get approved but it seems very friendly here. I like to think freebsd-questions is also a friendly place for questions too! :-) > So when i installed freeBSD about 5 days ago i noticed that it auto did > ZFS pool and everything didn't know why but i went with it. That is good! It's a good default option IMNHO. > Trying to understand it i looked online for some guides and the zfs > fs seems very intresting, snapshots, compression everything. It > seems that it was really made for two drives not one. i kinda > understand if my internal hdd goes out then i would have a backup. Because ZFS is often talked about in terms of high reliability the authors would not want to lead you astray thinking that you always get high reliability with ZFS even if using only a single device. You can see how someone might be disappointed if that single device failed, they lost data, and then were upset that ZFS did not protect them. Hence there are disclaimers appearing that ZFS can't save you if there is only one device and it fails. Such as on a laptop with a single SSD. But that does not mean that ZFS does not work well on a single device. Far from it! ZFS is excellent on a laptop with a single SSD! AFAICS if the system has more than 4GB of RAM then personally I install a ZFS file system. That includes most recent laptops. But if I were setting up a 256MB RPi on an SD card then I would likely choose UFS for the smaller memory footprint. Hopefully this makes sense? Also if I were setting up a VM for learning then I might use a 1GB virtual machine and in that case what's the harm if I were to overload the system? I would also use ZFS. It's not a production system with a critical uptime need for a web site or something. If it is just me using it for a test or debug or learning then that's fine too. > Currently setup a VM with freebsd and want to test zfs. should i make > two disk hard drives in the VM to test or should i be able to just play > with one ? As long as you are aware of the lack of hardware reliability in the case of a hardware failure then there is no problems using a single SSD in a laptop with ZFS. Or in a VM. Go for it! It's not that it creates a problem it is only a matter of setting people's expectations which matter. Personally I am addicted to the feature set of ZFS and now find myself wanting them when they are not available to me. So perhaps the biggest danger is that once you start using ZFS that you won't want to do without those features again either. :-) Bob
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