FreeBSD ZFS vs. ZoL Performance, Ubuntu ZFS On Linux Reference

With the IOzone write performance, the FreeBSD ZoL performance was slightly ahead of the stable ZFS implementation and on par with the Ubuntu ZFS file-system performance.

Dbench was a surprising case of the FreeBSD ZoL code losing out to the stable ZFS file-system support while Ubuntu 18.04 was the slowest in this configuration. FreeBSD UFS was well out in front, but likely from poor fsync behavior or the like, similar to the SQLite performance being too fast.

With the PostMark test case, FreeBSD ZoL saw a small but nice improvement over the mature ZFS support and was much faster than Ubuntu 18.04 ZoL in this synthetic and arguably not too relevant disk test.

Overall, the FreeBSD ZFS On Linux port is looking good so far and we are looking forward to it hopefully maturing in time for FreeBSD 13.0. Nice job to iX Systems and all of those involved, especially the ZFS On Linux project. Those wanting to help in testing can try the FreeBSD ZoL spins. Stay tuned for more benchmarks and on more diverse hardware as time allows and the FreeBSD ZoL support further matures, but so far at least the performance numbers are in good shape.