Anyone using freebsd ZFS for large storage servers?

[Daniel Feenberg]

On Fri, 1 Jun 2012, Wojciech Puchar wrote:

>>> Assuming that filesystem doesn't need offline filesystem check utility
>>> because it "never crash" is funny.
>>> 
>> 
>> zfs scrub...???
>
> when starting means crash quickly?
> Well.. no.
>
> Certainly with computers that never have hardware faults and assuming ZFS 
> doesn't have any software bugs you may be right.
>
> But in real world you will be hardly punished some day ;)
>
>> Additionally ZFS works directly at the block level of the HD meaning
>> that it is slightly different to the 'normal' file systems in storing
>> information and is also "self healing"......
>
> doesn't other filesystem work on block level too? if no - then at what level?
>

If the OP really intended to stripe disks with no parity or mirror for ZFS 
, then that is probably a mistake. If the disks are /tmp, it might make 
sense to stripe disks without parity, but no need for ZFS. The OP did say
"JBOD", which to me means that each disk is a separate disk partition with
no striping or parity. Again, in that case I don't see any need for ZFS.

As for ZFS being dangerous, we have a score of drive-years with no loss of 
data. The lack of fsck is considered in this intelligently written piece

   http://www.osnews.com/story/22423/Should_ZFS_Have_a_fsck_Tool_

The link to the emotional posting by Jeff Bomwick is broken, but the 
original is available at:

   http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/2008-October/022324.html

daniel feenberg
nber