RFC: Suggesting ZFS "best practices" in FreeBSD

[Borja Marcos]

On Jan 22, 2013, at 3:33 PM, Scott Long wrote:

> Look up SCSI device wiring in /sys/conf/NOTES.  That's one solution to static naming, just with a slightly different angle than Solaris.  I do agree with your general thesis here, and either wiring should be made a much more visible and documented feature, or a new mechanism should be developed to provide naming stability.  Please let me know what you think of the wiring mechanic.

The mechanism used in Solaris has, in my opinion, two benefits: it is used by default, which is important. It means less troublesome installations, less time bombs lurking.

The second important benefit is that, especially with many disks,  it's easier (at least for me) to think in terms of controllers and disks, rather than "disk number 47". But well, it can be different for many people.

Of course, a big advantage for Solaris was Sun hardware at least in the golden years, where everything was well predictable. PCs are chaos, and Intel based servers have inherited the worst of the PC chaos. 

But a good mechanism, and, I think, working by default, is badly needed. And I would advocate for a more "Solaris-like" approach.





Borja.