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0 pointsremexre1y ago0 comments

snapshots every 15 minutes are a big selling point of ZFS for me; losing a file to a tired

    $ grep bar foo.txt | tr A-Z a-z > foo.txt

is much more common than losing a disk

0 comments

sgbeal1y ago

> losing a file to a tired ...

If the file isn't in source control, a backup, or auto-synced cloud storage, it can't be _that_ important. If it was in either, it could be recovered easily without replacing one's filesystem with one which needs hand-holding to keep it running. Shrug.

remexreOP1y ago

ZFS is the mechanism by which I implement local (via snapshots) and remote (via zfs send) backups on my user-facing machines.

- It can do 4x 15-minute snapshots, 24x hourly snapshots, 7x daily snapshots, 4x weekly snapshots, and 12x monthly snapshots, without making 51 copies of my files.

- Taking a snapshot has imperceptible performance impact.

- Snapshots are taken atomically.

- Snapshots can be booted from, if it's a system that's screwed up and not just one file.

- Snapshots can be accessed without disturbing the FS.

In my experience it hasn't required more hand-holding than ext4 past the initial install, but the OSes that most of my devices use either officially support ZFS or don't use package managers that will blindly upgrade a kernel past what out-of-tree modules I'm using will support, which I think fixes the most common issue people have with ZFS.

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