Anyone using freebsd ZFS for large storage servers?

[Michael Sierchio]

On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 8:08 AM, Wojciech Puchar
<wojtek at wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl> wrote:

> ZFS is somehow in that part similar to Amiga "Fast" File System. when you
> overwrite a directory block (by hardware fault for example), everything
> below that directory will disappear. You may not be even aware of it until
> you need that data
>
> Only separate software (that - contrary to ZFS - do exist) can recover
> things by linearly scanning whole disk. terribly slow but at least possible.
>
>
>
> EVEN FAT16/FAT32 IS MORE SAFE.

First of all, in any environment you expect disk failures.  Which
operationally means replacing the entire disk.  Then you rely on the
raid recovery mechanism (in whichever flavor of disk discipline you
choose).  ZFS semantics (copy on write, for example) are much safer
than UFS semantics.  This is not to say that UFS is not a more mature
and possibly robust filesystem.  But relying on gmirror, graid, etc.
means you are no longer relying solely on the robustness of the
underlying filesystem - you cannot offer a reduction proof that shows
that if gmirror is bad, it means UFS is bad.

I use UFS for most purposes, but would never build a large fileserver
using gmirror on UFS.

Your assertions about the dangers of ZFS are just that - assertions.
They are not borne out in reality.

- M