OpenZFS 2.0-RC1 Released With Unified Linux/BSD Support, Zstd Compression & Much More

[phoronix]

Phoronix: OpenZFS 2.0-RC1 Released With Unified Linux/BSD Support, Zstd Compression & Much More

The first release candidate of the forthcoming OpenZFS 2.0 is now available for testing on both Linux and BSD systems...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OpenZFS-2.0-RC1-Released

[pranav]

What's the status of the Open ZFS license? Is it the same as ZFS!

[skeevy420]

What's the status of the Open ZFS license? Is it the same as ZFS!

Same.

[Alexmitter]

I am a ext4 dude and I will probably stay one for the rest of my life but is there any valid reason for ZFS on Linux when we have BTRFS? Or is it just fanboyism.

[uid313]

What's the status of the Open ZFS license? Is it the same as ZFS!

I wish it was the BSD/MIT/ISC license.

Same.

I wish it was the BSD/MIT/ISC license.

I am a ext4 dude and I will probably stay one for the rest of my life but is there any valid reason for ZFS on Linux when we have BTRFS? Or is it just fanboyism.

ZFS is licensed under the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) so it cannot be integrated into the upstreams mainline Linux kernel since then it is not GPL.
So on Linux you either can patch in ZFS and maintain it outside of the mainline kernel, or use it in user space through FUSE. Btrfs on the other hand is under the GPL so it available directly in the mainline Linux kernel.

[mbod]

I am a ext4 dude and I will probably stay one for the rest of my life but is there any valid reason for ZFS on Linux when we have BTRFS? Or is it just fanboyism.

ZFS has stable support for ALL RAID levels. btrfs is still struggling with RAID5/6. btrfs is no providing a true RAID10 level.
But other than that btrfs is valid alternative for ZFS.

The license topic by the way, is not an issue at all. The license just prevents the distribution of ZFS together with the kernel. But it does not prevent or restrict the usage of ZFS. If you happen to use a distro which comes with precompiled ZFS modules, like Ubuntu or Manjaro, you are good to go.

[starshipeleven]

I am a ext4 dude and I will probably stay one for the rest of my life but is there any valid reason for ZFS on Linux when we have BTRFS? Or is it just fanboyism.

ZFS can do things that btrfs still cannot do, like RAID5/6 and performant RAM caching to offset the performance penalties of CoW filesystems, or native filesystem-level encryption.

In theory, this situation is temporary, as btrfs should eventually get better and add the missing features as development procedes, but if you want those features NOW there is no real choice.

[starshipeleven]

What's the status of the Open ZFS license? Is it the same as ZFS!

why are you even asking? None is in the process of changing it

[mbod]

I am a ext4 dude and I will probably stay one for the rest of my life....

That is good for you, but if you want a filesystem that can automatically detect and repair corrupted data your only choice is ZFS or btrfs. That checksum functionality is very important for me because it makes my backup media a safer place.

[pkese]

ZFS can do things that btrfs still cannot do, like RAID5/6 and performant RAM caching to offset the performance penalties of CoW filesystems, or native filesystem-level encryption.

I'm trying to understand the 'performant RAM caching' part...

Is ZFS's ARC cache really superior in any way compared to classical Linux block cache used by regular Linux filesystems?

My assumption regarding ZFS's ARC cache was that it got integrated into ZFS because that made sense on Solaris.
Then when porting the code to Linux that caching layer was just too hard to refactor out of ZFS (in order to switch to using the regular Linux block cache), so they kept the ARC cache in the codebase.
In some cases ARC leads to worse resource utilization: memory mapped files end up being cached in both caches (thus wasting 2x RAM for no extra effect).

Nevertheless, ZFS is known to perform very well on machines with lots of memory.

Can somebody with more technical knowledge correct me if I'm wrong?