[Discuss] LVM Snapshot Wrapup

[markw at mohawksoft.com (markw at mohawksoft.com)]

>> From: markw at mohawksoft.com [mailto:markw at mohawksoft.com]
>>
>> That license issue is a real issue for a business. Besides that, storage
>> is a commodity. I think the market for something that is billed as
>> storage
>> is pretty much saturated.
>
> I just want to be sure this is clear - there is no license issue, unless
> you
> want to run zfs directly on linux.  There is no problem, even for a
> business, if you're running zfs on solaris/openindiana/freebsd or any
> other
> compatible OS, and sharing that storage (iscsi, nfs, whatever) to any
> other
> clients, such as linux or whatever.  You're not trying to talk crazy talk
> or
> fud, are you?  It sounds strangely confused...  The cddl/gpl license
> incompatibility thing is not an issue for either an individual or business
> who is using it internally and not distributing it.  And there is no
> difference between being a business or an individual or anything else -
> it's
> all the same, and must abide by the same rules either way.

No, I have not been trying to be engaged in "FUD." For what I want to do,
well actually the product I envision, enlists a common set of
functionality available in LVM2, ZFS, and Btrfs, and pretty much builds on
Linux. If push comes to shove I could use FreeBSD, but I don't like the
lack of hardware support. Unless I am mistaken, Linux has surpassed
FreeBSD in overall performance. Lastly, I can use "RedHat" or some other
supported Linux as part of the sales pitch if needed.

>
> If you're talking about doing snapshots / backups / whatever based on LVM
> and billing it as something other than storage or backups, I'd be very
> curious just what on earth you are talking about, or what non-saturated
> market you're thinking about.

Well, LOL, come on, that's the point, right?

As a teaser, think of it this way, yes, disk storage is ridiculously
cheap. Its like, what, $100 for a terrabyte? $150 for 2TB? To what end?
Best case transfer rate is 160MByte/Second with available hardware. Do the
math on a full backup. Transfer speeds have not increased proportionally
with media size.

What's the point of all that data? For the data to be worth anything it
must be durable for as long as it is needed. My bet is that 90% of all
data is worthless, yet we treat all data equally. There is a continuity in
classes of data ranging from data that must be absolutely durable to data
that is used once and abandoned.


>
>
>> >> Btrfs:
>> >> Doesn't have a completely functional fsck yet, and still has
> performance
>> >> issues. It is still not considered "stable" yet with regard to the
>> >> kernel.
>> >
>> > Are you trying to solve a problem for yourself, or trying to create a
> new
>> > product for general use by people on the internet at large?  If it's a
>> > general product you're planning to invent ... the "not stable yet"
>> > argument
>> > against btrfs won't hold water for long.  It barely holds water now,
>> as
>> > people are starting to deploy btrfs in production, and btrfs is being
>> > included (but not enabled by default) in most major distributions.
>>
>> It has been well over a year since it was rejected by RedHat because of
>> the issue and it still does not have one.
>
> I don't understand your use of pronouns in that sentence...  What was
> rejected by redhat?  What issue?  What still does not have one of what?

In 2010, Fedora Core was planning to use Btrfs as its file system, but
abandoned plans when the support tools were not up to spec.
>
>