[NCLUG] ZFS RAID-Z2 for /home on Ubuntu 12.04

[Michael Milligan]

On 08/12/2013 10:06 AM, Sean Reifschneider wrote:
> I have never run /home on ZFS, but I have no reason to expect it wouldn't
> work.  I would use the zfs-on-linux version rather than the FUSE version if
> I were starting today, but all my systems use FUSE because that is what I
> had tested for my backups applications, predating the zfs-on-linux project.
> 
> I would probably set it up as a pool called "storage" or similar, and then
> create a "home" ZFS under that pool, and set that up with a mountpoint of
> /home.  It should get mounted on boot as part of the ZFS startup.
> 
> However, I haven't used the zfs-on-linux code, so there are likely some
> details that I'm just not aware of here.  But the overall plan of using ZFS
> for /home seems solid.

Just a data point to add, I switched to zfs-on-linux several years ago,
and there were some bumps, but the 0.6.x code has been rock solid late
last year and this.  Compiles on all kernels in Ubuntu up through 3.8.0
with DKMS, no problems.  And it's significantly faster than the FUSE
variant, though I did not do extensive benchmarking.

That said, I have /not/ trusted it with root (/) or even /home, so
haven't tried that, but it should work fine at this point.  That was one
of the bumps early on.

FWIW, the switch from FUSE was trivial, don't even have to "zpool
upgade" the pools if you don't want, it will run with an older pool rev.

Another data point, I've been running Debian/kFreeBSD for a while too,
rock solid with native ZFS pool and a mountpoint for root (/).

Regards,
Mike

-- 
Michael Milligan                                   -> milli at acmeps.com