Re: Need advice on ZFS

[Will Senn <will.senn%gmail.com@localhost>]

On 8/8/24 14:53, Jonathan A. Kollasch wrote:

> On Thu, Aug 08, 2024 at 02:19:18PM -0500, Ted Spradley wrote:
> > Should I trust NetBSD's ZFS with my user's data?
> >
> > I understand that our ZFS isn't being kept up as well as FreeBSD's,
> > that's why I have FreeBSD on one box on my home network, but I'd like
> > to keep all *my* hosts on NetBSD (my users run Windows). I have one
> > user (my wife) who has over 5 Terabytes of stuff she's very protective
> > of, but relies on me to protect it. 
> >
> > When I set up the file server I specified compatibility=2020. Would our
> > ZFS understand that?
> >       
> I recently looked at this... NetBSD's features (per
> https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/Basic%20Concepts/Feature%20Flags.html#compatibility
> ) are the same as what's listed in my ZoL
> /usr/share/zfs/compatibility.d/freebsd-11.0 file, and that file lists
> the same features as /usr/share/zfs/compatibility.d/compat-2020 so you
> should be good.
>     
    Interesting question and
      perspective. I've been using ZFS since about FreeBSD 8. I've never
      lost a bit and it's so easy to manage. The only issues I have ever
      experienced (many, many TB of files across dozens of drives and
      controllers) were transferring between my Linux machines and the
      FreeBSD machines. I would expect it to be similar to NetBSD and
      FreeBSD or Linux. Those pesky features!!! The annoyance is that
      zfs complains when you try to access a drive/or snapshot from one
      system on another with different features. The good news is that
      it doesn't affect the integrity of the original, the bad news is
      that it's a pain to get it over on the new system. That said, it's
      always been the case that I've been able to get the job done -
      usually mounting the drive/snapshot with the incompatible feature
      read-only and zfs sending it to the destination with the other set
      of features. But, in recent days, this hasn't happened at all.
      
      Full disclosure, I'm a big ZFS fan - been burned so many times by
      other "filesystems" it's ludicrous. Let me count the ways that
      I've been saved by zfs, well it's a big number :). Now, if I could
      easily do zfs on root and bectl like on freebsd on netbsd or
      linux, that'd make my life complete. I get tired of backing up
      when a sent snapshot is just as good and ten times as easy...
      
      Will