linux-btrfs.vger.kernel.org archive mirror
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Hugo Mills <hugo@carfax.org.uk>
To: Martin <m_btrfs@ml1.co.uk>
Cc: linux-btrfs@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: ditto blocks on ZFS
Date: Sat, 17 May 2014 15:24:58 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20140517142457.GB2537@carfax.org.uk> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <ll7lvd$ulk$1@ger.gmane.org>

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1711 bytes --]

On Sat, May 17, 2014 at 01:50:52PM +0100, Martin wrote:
> On 16/05/14 04:07, Russell Coker wrote:
> > https://blogs.oracle.com/bill/entry/ditto_blocks_the_amazing_tape
> > 
> > Probably most of you already know about this, but for those of you who haven't 
> > the above describes ZFS "ditto blocks" which is a good feature we need on 
> > BTRFS.  The briefest summary is that on top of the RAID redundancy there...
> [... are additional copies of metadata ...]
> 
> 
> Is that idea not already implemented in effect in btrfs with the way
> that the superblocks are replicated multiple times, ever more times, for
> ever more huge storage devices?

   Superblocks are the smallest part of the metadata. There's a whole
load of metadata that's not in the superblocks that isn't replicated
in this way.

> The one exception is for SSDs whereby there is the excuse that you
> cannot know whether your data is usefully replicated across different
> erase blocks on a single device, and SSDs are not 'that big' anyhow.
> 
> 
> So... Your idea of replicating metadata multiple times in proportion to
> assumed 'importance' or 'extent of impact if lost' is an interesting
> approach. However, is that appropriate and useful considering the real
> world failure mechanisms that are to be guarded against?
> 
> Do you see or measure any real advantage?

   This. How many copies do you actually need? Are there concrete
statistics to show the marginal utility of each additional copy?

   Hugo.

-- 
=== Hugo Mills: hugo@... carfax.org.uk | darksatanic.net | lug.org.uk ===
  PGP key: 65E74AC0 from wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net or http://www.carfax.org.uk
     --- IMPROVE YOUR ORGANISMS!!  -- Subject line of spam email ---     

[-- Attachment #2: Digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 811 bytes --]

  reply	other threads:[~2014-05-17 14:25 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 18+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2014-05-16  3:07 ditto blocks on ZFS Russell Coker
2014-05-17 12:50 ` Martin
2014-05-17 14:24   ` Hugo Mills [this message]
2014-05-18 16:09   ` Russell Coker
2014-05-19 20:36     ` Martin
2014-05-19 21:47       ` Brendan Hide
2014-05-20  2:07         ` Russell Coker
2014-05-20 14:07           ` Austin S Hemmelgarn
2014-05-20 20:11             ` Brendan Hide
2014-05-20 14:56           ` ashford
2014-05-21  2:51             ` Russell Coker
2014-05-21 23:05               ` Martin
2014-05-22 11:10                 ` Austin S Hemmelgarn
2014-05-22 22:09               ` ashford
2014-05-23  3:54                 ` Russell Coker
2014-05-23  8:03                   ` Duncan
2014-05-21 23:29           ` Konstantinos Skarlatos
2014-05-22 15:28 Tomasz Chmielewski

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=20140517142457.GB2537@carfax.org.uk \
    --to=hugo@carfax.org.uk \
    --cc=linux-btrfs@vger.kernel.org \
    --cc=m_btrfs@ml1.co.uk \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).