ZFS (was Reliable Firewire drives)

[Alex Satrapa]

On 09/02/2008, at 06:08 , John C. Welch wrote:

> It also points out that contrary to PR, ZFS is not the magic file  
> system,
> it's not perfect in form and execution, nor is it the last  
> filesystem you'll
> ever need.

The story also points out that in any disaster recovery plan, you  
have to rehearse the recovery portion of the plan.

That is to say, when making backup copies of file systems as part of  
a recovery plan, at some point in time someone has to try doing a  
recovery from the backup copy.  Then you'd have ample warning about  
file system errors creeping into block-wise copies of your existing  
file systems.

The story could also be used to point out that block-wise copies of  
file systems are a  bad idea.  It is obvious that you should do  
logical copies of the file system (copying file by file), to avoid  
carrying block-level faults (file system, hardware error, or  
otherwise) to your precious backup copy.

The story is about poor recovery planning first, bug in file system  
second.

Regards
Alex