Stratis 3.6 Released For Improving Linux Storage Management

[Chugworth]

I think you're missing the point. btrfs was that attempt, and it has failed. So Red Hat, seeing that failure, has instead decided to build features on to an existing, stable filesystem. I get their reasoning.

Like all of you, I'm eagerly awaiting bcachefs

I wouldn't call Btrfs a failure. It's great in certain use cases, but it doesn't seem to be getting any better. With Stratis, they're trying to implement features that were never even thought of when XFS was designed, so they'll hit more limits than Btrfs.

Bcachefs does show promise, but if you were to change to it right now it would be a step down from Btrfs.

[kreijack]

I would probably like the sound of Stratis more if it reverted to EVMS instead of LVM. I have never much liked Linux LVM or its tooling. It's never too late to admit that one made a mistake and go back and fix it.

I don't know very well EVMS, but IIRC it was an IBM volume manager ported to linux, of which only the user space (based on the LVM kernel interface) was successfully ported.
Said that, in what Stratis would be different if it was based on EVMS instead of DM (not LVM) ? My understanding is that now every volume manager is based on the device mapper API, so they have more o less the same capability. Only the user interface is different; stratis doesn't add any newer capability than dm+xfs.

Anyway, creating a filesystem with snapshot+quota+reflink + volume manager (both native like BTRFS, ZFS or stacked over a DM layer like stratis) is easy. Very difficult is guarantee that it performs quite well (but it would be enough a "not bad") in any reasonable workload (considering even the reshaping of the raid profile, the device replacement, the filesystem resize, scrub/silvering...).

[Developer12]

from their presentation in 2018: https://lwn.net/Articles/755454/\

until stratis implements dm-integrity and dm-raid, I honestly could not give less of a shit.

[lproven]

IIRC it was an IBM volume manager ported to linux

Not as I understand it, no. Yes, IBM sponsored, but not a port.

I only played with either when they were rivals but I found the EVMS tools _much_ superior.

I was not alone, e.g.

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-454776-start-0.html

I still find LVM a mess today, and I don't think many people understand it well. Its integration with mdraid and Btrfs is messy with a lot of duplication, too.

I favour simple, clean tools as a rule. More complicated means more to go wrong. I think the kernel folks backed the wrong horse here.

Not the first time that's happened, won't be the last.