BTRFS

[jack.mitchell]

Is anyone here using BTRFS, I'm soon going to be setting up a server and want to use btrfs to manage 5 2tb hard drives preferably in some sort of raid 5 parity style array.

I know there are lots of upcoming improvements in 3.2, but I want to get some opinions first hand to see if anyone is currently using it. I would also be interested if you could be using it but aren't.

The other option I was looking at was ZFS but I would run this under Solaris I guess...

I will most likely be using Archlinux as the host distribution.

 

[jack.mitchell]

My real goal is here is have a raid 5 array which I can dynamically add to as I buy/replace disks with different sizes and manufacturers. Is this possible with ext4?

 

[jack.mitchell]

You can do it by defining the mount points and not partitioning in the arch installer, I've done it before so it can't be rocket science !

 

[jack.mitchell]

Yes, I've been following it. Unfortunatly my server now has a 10TB Software Raid 5 on ext4 so I don't think that will be changing anytime soon! It was a nice idea, just a bit too late for my needs.

 

[jack.mitchell]

btrfs does migration "in place" -- basically it keeps the extX partition, adds the metadata over it and even keep the ext ad a read-only 'base' snapshot for the btrfs overlay.

Once you are happy with the btrfs, you can remove the base snapshot and end up with a "pure" btrfs...

And all that without having to copy a single file...

Interesting, what about my mdadm configuration how would it handle the transition to native btrfs raid?