Re: [PLUG] iSCSI storage appliance(s)

[Rich Freeman <r-plug@thefreemanclan.net>]

On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 11:25 AM, Carl Johnson
<cjohnson19791979@gmail.com> wrote:
> My main reason for not going the ZFS route is what you confirmed. Easy
> scalability and RAM both of which potentially change the hardware scope the
> most and, therefore, the cost.

At the scales you're running at, adding/replacing disks in groups
might not be such a big deal.  I'd be pretty hesitant to recommend
btrfs for anything that scale.  It isn't so much that btrfs can't
handle it - if anything it is designed for exactly those kinds of
jobs.  The problem is that it is still somewhat glitchy and dealing
with issues when you have 20TB of data to restore/fix/check/whatever
is going to consume time or result in downtime.

I wouldn't be afraid to use ZFS as long as you understand the
requirements and can work within their system for adding/removing
drives.  On linux it will require FUSE, but that isn't a big deal at
all if it isn't running the root filesystem, and it is managable with
a decent initramfs if you are (dracut is getting rather good these
days).

Hmm, that makes me wonder if dracut might not be a good topic for a
talk.  I'm not sure how many are using it, or if any distros are using
it automatically.  It is a remarkable little initramfs-builder though.

Rich
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