Is UFS more appropriate than ZFS on non-ECC motherboards

[mark.farnell]

Your bigger concern is the lack of ECC RAM. You will be at risk of losing your data with that system.

I have just read:

http://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/ecc-vs-non-ecc-ram-and-zfs.15449/

In my case, I have the ASUS P5QSE motherboard with 8GB of non-ECC RAM. Since the board does not accept ECC RAM, I would need to buy a completely new machine if I were to go the ECC route. If I were to use the old machine for NAS, then would it be better for me to use UFS instead of ZFS? Are there any other filesystem better for my purpose on a non-ECC system?

 

[cyberjock]

Yes, but there's MANY limitations to using UFS.

1. UFS support is gone.. 9.2.2+ will have no UFS support. So if you are going to use it, what you install right now is likely the last version of FreeNAS you will be able to use.
2. UFS has no support for the data protection stuff that ZFS has. bit-rot protection, etc doesn't exist for UFS.
3. Your RAID types for UFS are very limited.
4. Not all jails are 100% compatible with UFS.

UFS is legacy, not really tested, and about to be removed, so if you plan to use it, you do so at your own risk. I wouldn't recommend anyone go with UFS. If you plan to go with FreeNAS you should be dedicated to going ZFS all the way. If you can't do this I'd find a different OS.

 

[mark.farnell]

Yes, but there's MANY limitations to using UFS.

1. UFS support is gone.. 9.2.2+ will have no UFS support. So if you are going to use it, what you install right now is likely the last version of FreeNAS you will be able to use.
2. UFS has no support for the data protection stuff that ZFS has. bit-rot protection, etc doesn't exist for UFS.
3. Your RAID types for UFS are very limited.
4. Not all jails are 100% compatible with UFS.

UFS is legacy, not really tested, and about to be removed, so if you plan to use it, you do so at your own risk. I wouldn't recommend anyone go with UFS. If you plan to go with FreeNAS you should be dedicated to going ZFS all the way. If you can't do this I'd find a different OS.

So is it fair to say that if I were to use FreeNAS, ZFS is the only feasible option in long term? How about other FS such as btrfs and ext4? If so, then it means I should not reuse my non-ECC P5QSE board as NAS........

 

[alexg]

Cyberjock, are there plans to support any other filesystem. I fail to understand why would someone want to use ZFS to write to external USB/eSata drive for rotating backup purposes. It seems to me that UFS is best fit. I would hope that FreeNAS team considers replacing UFS with support for ext4 or ext2 or other Linux filesystems

 

[cyberjock]

ext4 is basically linux exclusively. If you want that, go linux.

btrfs isn't comparable to ZFS. It's relatively new and relatively untested compared to ZFS.

In short, it's like I said above...

If you plan to go with FreeNAS you should be dedicated to going ZFS all the way. If you can't do this I'd find a different OS.

Your motherboard manufacture isn't classified as server-grade, which our forum stickies explain is something to seriously consider if you want a good long lasting server. No, I'd never consider building a server out of your hardware.

 

[alexg]

I'm not original poster. I actually did buy ThinkServer with ECC based on your recommendation. But I also connected eSata drive to rotate backups using rsync and don't see why I need to use ZFS or even have another server dedicated for backups. This is home server.

 

[cyberjock]

alexg: I actually didn't see your post when I posted. ;)

No, there's no plan to add more file systems. The reason being that generally you go with ZFS because you go HUGE(think 10TB+). As such, you'd be silly to try to back up that kind of data to USB. Because of this potential problem, ZFS has it's own backup mechanism.... zfs replication. Yes, it requires a second pool(preferably on a second system) but ZFS was designed for business use and not home use.

ZFS' replication system was designed around a thought process. Got lots of data to backup and I need a good solution...

Also, if you chose to go with ANY other FS, you'd lose lots of features like bitrot protection and such. So there's no reason to want to use other FS, and plenty of reasons NOT to.

 

[alexg]

Understood, but FreeNAS has great potential to be a Window's Home Server replacement(that's what I was running since very early days) especially for those that are tech savvy. I don't have an issue with running ZFS inside the box (already have two pools: primary and replicated backup), but still would be nice to be able to backup to USB/eSata external without a need for second machine to be up.