Comments on How to install and configure ZFS on Linux using Debian Jessie 8.1

Please don't forget to say that ZFS requires ECC RAM... It should be on red bold blink whatever you want.

As far as I know this isn't exactly true. ECC isn't recomended for ZFS, it's recomended for enterprise solutions with a high demand for data integrity. Such a demand has nothing to do with ZFS. Please read this: http://zfsonlinux.org/faq.html#DoIHaveToUseECCMemory

It also does'n require an huge amount of RAM. Yes, some pro features will require plenty of RAM but the most features will do fine with 2GiB or less. Please read this: http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20150420#myth

I am sorry to say that, although I want to try ZFS, the many typographical errors and grammatical errors in this article make me suspect that also code segments might contain errors that might result in data loss. Please get someone to check this article and the code elements for errors and make corrections. Then I might try to implement the procedure.

English language may not be first languge of the autor and trust me it is not related to his ZFS knowlege in any way.

That's just a lie, you trust the commands just fine, you just want to berate someone for their writing errors.

 Donald, the code elements from this article it is OK.

Very good article.  Any reason why using the direct block devices instead of by-id for the hard drives?

Christope, You DON'T require ECC, although it is highly recommended.  No need for red bold blink.

http://ianhowson.com/do-you-really-need-ecc-ram-with-zfs.html

For development and testing using /dev/sdX naming is quick and easy.

http://zfsonlinux.org/faq.html#WhatDevNamesShouldIUseWhenCreatingMyPool

I'm confused about the chicken and the egg. I am interested in using ZFS with Debian and Xen for VMs on a workstation. Am I to understand that the above installation will create Debian on say ext4 with an additional ZFS filesystem? How to install Debian on ZFS? And should I create a separate ZFS filesysem for each VM? And install Debian on each VM and ZFS on each VM? Is there anyway to use ZFS with the debian installer?

Install ZFS as root filesystem in linux is a big effort, so far... i use zfs only for data filesystem, but you can follow this tutorial if you want to install Debian to a native zfs root filesystem. https://github.com/zfsonlinux/pkg-zfs/wiki/HOWTO-install-Debian-GNU-Linux-to-a-Native-ZFS-Root-Filesystem

What's the situation with zfs and Debian now in 2016? http://zfsonlinux.org/debian.html says "These packages are no longer actively maintained and will not be updated as new releases are tagged." It mentions zfs might be coming to Debian but it looks like it's only in Debian/kfreebsd.

It simply says that the packages have been moved to an official debian repo: https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/wiki/Debian

The information from pero about ZFS myths is good, but also features simply wrong information about ZFS and ECC Ram.

"Also, it is important to note that data corruption can happen under any file system, there is nothing special about ZFS that would make it more vulnerable to corruption using non-ECC RAM."

This is simply wrong. Due to ZFS's error correction capabilities, these errors could stack up and corrupt ZFS far more than one simple error, therefore it's highly recommended to use ECC.

Another point is the ram requirements. Deduplication (which of course requires huge amounts) aside, yes, you can run ZFS with very little ram. However, it is recommended not to save money on this. If a situation with full memory occurs, no one can save your data and memory is cheap.

(Recommendations e.g. from FreeNAS usually range 8-16 GB minimum)

 Hi all.I've kept my server regurlary updated, yesterday i had to shut it down due to a power takeout.When the power came back on, i booted it up.Now it won't modprobe the ZFS module.I've tried about 6-7 hours yesterday to get it up and running, with no luck.Anyone have any pointers?

There is a script to install Debian 8 Jessie to a native ZFS root filesystem (no ext2/3/4 or msdos partitions needed anymore).

I wish you would have given more attention to maintenance rather than creating RAID arrays.

I really don't know how safe this all is and what tools you can use.