[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.