[talk] ZFS v UFS on APU2 msata SSD with FreeBSD

[Isaac (.ike) Levy]

On Fri, May 17, 2019, at 1:37 PM, Charles Sprickman wrote:
> 
> > On May 17, 2019, at 10:23 AM, Isaac (.ike) Levy <ike at blackskyresearch.net> wrote:
> > 
> > Word,
> > 
> > On Fri, May 17, 2019, at 10:11 AM, George Rosamond wrote:
> >> Greetings.
> >> 
> >> I've generally run OpenBSD on my swarm of APU2s, but I'm going to run 
> >> FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE on one.
> >> 
> >> I've tended to shy away from ZFS since I'm not in large data mode, and 
> >> with a single disk in this case, there's really no huge benefit.
> > 
> > But there is, depending... :)
> > 
> > Just to be pedantic, top of head reasons why ZFS is not just great for "big disks", but is advantageous on this sort of board/media:
> > 
> > - No fsck, (design is better than journaling even).
> > - Block level checksumming (find what would otherwise be silent corruption)
> >  - Even if not multi-disk zpool, (which can auto-replicate bad blocks), one can preempt major problems by knowing their data is good.
> 
> - Maybe not useful, and perhaps even bad on an SSD (DIY write 
> amplification), setting the “copies” parameter lets you take advantage 
> of all the free space you probably have on something like a firewall 
> where you’re using like 5% of the disk space…  I know on a spinny drive 
> copies can save your life, not sure how that intersects with the more 
> common SSD failure modes tho...

SSD's die just like any disk!  Spork, thanks for blowing my mind again today it never even occured to me that block "copies" could be used to increase chance of recovery as bitrot sets in on single disks...  (e.g. when the ZFS scrubs start reporting lots of dead blocks [and copying duplicates], it's time to buy a new disk...)

Years of using ZFS and never even thought of that awesome little gem.

Best,
.ike





> 
> > - Snapshots and User Features (way better than hard partitioning in practice, because all can be changed in live system runtime):
> >  - New logical partitions any time you want them
> >  - Quotas
> >  - Backup/Restore via snapshots/incrementals (awesome for embedded app deploys)
> > 
> > Etc...  etc...
> > 
> >> 
> >> But I decided to go with ZFS on this msata EVO Sony with geli encryption.
> > 
> > This should be excellent, I'd be curious to hear your experience here- (since I know you to have years of embedded BSD practical experience, but new to using ZFS on it...)
> > 
> >> 
> >> Does it make sense?  Does anyone else have experiences with ZFS v UFS on APU2s?
> > 
> > It's a real delightful combo, IMHO, and great timing- because ZFS memory/implementation is really reliable, (used to *require* so much more RAM and tweaking), nowadays it just works- properly boring.
> 
> Tell me more…  I avoid ZFS on anything without 8GB or more of RAM, so 
> I’ve never used it on 512MB/1GB/2GB VPS hosts I have out there. Should 
> I be using it?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> C
> 
> > 
> > Again, would love to hear your good/bad/ugly as you go.
> > 
> > Best,
> > .ike
> > 
> > 
> >> 
> >> g
> >> 
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> >> 
> > 
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