[reacharavindh]

Not a file system developer but an ardent ZFS user. Here are my thoughts.

I pick ZFS every time because of its usability, reliability, and being able to easily understand what goes on without being a master of the OS ecosystem it runs on.

For example, pick ZFS, and sit with the ZFS handbook for 15 minutes and you already know how and what to do to:

[Create/modify/destroy] X [Vdev/Zpools/datasets]

A disk gives out, it is easy to k ow what to do to let ZFS deal with it without googling hard and relying on forums about what the right thing to do for your OS is - unless you already know it.

ZFS is not the fastest filesystem to pick with it being a COW fs. But, it does everything so well, feels solidly thought out that it gives a lot of confidence to the user which is very important aspect for a file system.

I hope bcachefs and many other modern filesystems that are vying for mainstream adoption like ZFS keeps these virtues from ZFS. Until then, I would happily try and play with them, but not think about using them in stuff I really care about.

[vthriller]

> I pick ZFS every time because of its … reliability, and being able to easily understand what goes on

https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/issues?utf8=&q=is%3Aissue+...

Panics and other issues are pretty rare for regular users that don't push ZFS to its limits with over-utilized RAM or obscure kernel and/or ZFS features, but when you do encounter problems, you better know some kernel internals kung-fu if you want to keep using recent kernel and ZFS versions rather sooner.

(This argument is mainly about ZoL though; I can't speak for Illumos or FreeBSD that have somewhat tighter integration between ZFS and the rest of the kernel.)

[reacharavindh]

Hmmm. True that when you encounter a panic or a serious error, and you lack serious system/kernel/OS skills, it can be real trouble. But still less so than picking a new/developing filesytstem. There are so many eyes on ZFS that one would hope someone with the skills you lack is already looking at that serious issue or at least will do if you file a bug report.

As a personal experience, I have two ZFS based file servers being hammered by researchers pushing it in many weird IO patterns, bursts requests and so for about a year and half without ever hitting a serious error. I'm amazed by how rock solid the system is. One of them even has a Optane cache for NFS writes- just to give you an idea of feature richness.

FreeBSD+ZFS on a dedicated server+JBODs. I keep the infrastructure dead simple and they are a charm.