NVMe ZNS Makes It Into Linux 5.9 Along With MD RAID Fixes

[phoronix]

Phoronix: NVMe ZNS Makes It Into Linux 5.9 Along With MD RAID Fixes

NVMe 2.0's Zoned Namespaces (ZNS) functionality is now supported by the mainline Linux kernel...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...s-In-Linux-5.9

[tildearrow]

Does this mean we will be able to use F2FS or UBIFS directly on our SSDs with ZNS?

[numacross]

Does this mean we will be able to use F2FS or UBIFS directly on our SSDs with ZNS?

But why? The controller firmware is far more capable and knowledgeable about the exact properties of the underlying flash modules. Apart from very specific use cases I don't think it's going to be beneficial for home or even most enterprise users.

[jrch2k8]

But why? The controller firmware is far more capable and knowledgeable about the exact properties of the underlying flash modules. Apart from very specific use cases I don't think it's going to be beneficial for home or even most enterprise users.

Well, for Enterprise, Cloud and Big Storage make sense since you could have fined grained control over allocations because the controller in most SSD are decent or functional but not even close to good and never will be, because controllers are generic.

Also this is not about how the hardware handle every bit on the flash at hardware level, that is still handled by the hardware but more about allocations, read more here https://zonedstorage.io/introduction/zns/

[numacross]

Well, for Enterprise, Cloud and Big Storage make sense since you could have fined grained control over allocations because the controller in most SSD are decent or functional but not even close to good and never will be, because controllers are generic.

Also this is not about how the hardware handle every bit on the flash at hardware level, that is still handled by the hardware but more about allocations, read more here https://zonedstorage.io/introduction/zns/

Thanks for the link. I see more clearly what it is now, but my opinion still stands - it's targeted towards certain use cases in enterprise.

[jrch2k8]

Thanks for the link. I see more clearly what it is now, but my opinion still stands - it's targeted towards certain use cases in enterprise.

Not necessarily, for virtualization is huge as well from simple VMs on your PC to data centers of course, i also expect this to made it into ZFS/BTRFS and helps lots with NVME performance since their allocation schemes are quite complex

[numacross]

Not necessarily, for virtualization is huge as well from simple VMs on your PC to data centers of course, i also expect this to made it into ZFS/BTRFS and helps lots with NVME performance since their allocation schemes are quite complex

Unless the next version of NVMe specifications make this mandatory it's not going to be included in mainstream devices. I do see the benefits, but the problem is availability in hardware.

[starshipeleven]

Does this mean we will be able to use F2FS or UBIFS directly on our SSDs with ZNS?

F2FS is a block device filesystem (as ext4/XFS/Btrfs/whatever), UBI/UBIFS is a raw flash filesystem.

You can already format a SSD with F2FS

[starshipeleven]

Thanks for the link. I see more clearly what it is now, but my opinion still stands - it's targeted towards certain use cases in enterprise.

will be useful in a few years when the old enterprise hardware is sold as used.

I got some 20x 600GB SAS drives for like 100 euro a few years ago. They were manufactured in 2013

[oiaohm]

Unless the next version of NVMe specifications make this mandatory it's not going to be included in mainstream devices. I do see the benefits, but the problem is availability in hardware.

I would not be too sure of that we have to take ZBC harddrives have host managed and host aware versions. ZNS SSD could have two versions as well in the controllers. Host aware versions would mean non modified OS could use the driver just like they used to. ZNS commands could be used like ZBC on host aware drives for extracting extra information on the drive usage states including possible allowing flash drives to have a user trigger-able block de-fragmentation. So a main stream SSD with ZBC in host aware could claim higher resistance to random slow downs than one without even for a non modified OS like Windows just having to run a manual de-fragmentation tool. SSD vendors are always after to sell higher and higher performance.

The question I really have is are we going to get host aware SSD with ZNS because this will alter how fast we see ZNS SSD in mainstream devices due to the advantages that ZNS usage could give without needing to update OS that much.

F2FS already works with ZNS SSD.