btrfs on RHEL7 (kernel 3.10.0) production ready?

btrfs on RHEL7 (kernel 3.10.0) production ready?

[Ulli Horlacher]

I have RHEL 7 and CentOS 7.6 servers with kernel 3.10.0 and btrfs-progs v4.9.1
Is btrfs there ready for production usage(*)?

I will not use any btrfs RAID modes, because I have hardware RAID.
I just want to use (some few) snapshots.

The filesystem will have 50 TB and the server (VM) has 8 CPUs and 8 GB RAM.

Any recommendations?

(*) A (web based) file server, see https://fex.rus.uni-stuttgart.de/

-- 
Ullrich Horlacher              Server und Virtualisierung
Rechenzentrum TIK         
Universitaet Stuttgart         E-Mail: horlacher@tik.uni-stuttgart.de
Allmandring 30a                Tel:    ++49-711-68565868
70569 Stuttgart (Germany)      WWW:    http://www.tik.uni-stuttgart.de/
REF:<20190803100928.GB29941@tik.uni-stuttgart.de>

Re: btrfs on RHEL7 (kernel 3.10.0) production ready?

[Nikolay Borisov]

On 3.08.19 г. 13:09 ч., Ulli Horlacher wrote:
> I have RHEL 7 and CentOS 7.6 servers with kernel 3.10.0 and btrfs-progs v4.9.1
> Is btrfs there ready for production usage(*)?
> 
> I will not use any btrfs RAID modes, because I have hardware RAID.
> I just want to use (some few) snapshots.
> 
> The filesystem will have 50 TB and the server (VM) has 8 CPUs and 8 GB RAM.
> 
> Any recommendations?
> 
> (*) A (web based) file server, see https://fex.rus.uni-stuttgart.de/
> 

Vendor-specific enquiries should be directed at the respective vendor.

Re: btrfs on RHEL7 (kernel 3.10.0) production ready?

[Adam Borowski]

On Sat, Aug 03, 2019 at 12:09:28PM +0200, Ulli Horlacher wrote:
> I have RHEL 7 and CentOS 7.6 servers with kernel 3.10.0 and btrfs-progs v4.9.1
> Is btrfs there ready for production usage(*)?

Hell no!

It's a truly ancient kernel, from the times btrfs wasn't considered stable.
There's a lot of backports atop it, which for a quickly evolving filesystem
are pretty unsafe unless there's a large team doing that work.

And unlike SLES, there's none.  This led to notorious breakages, with Red
Hat finally declaring btrfs unsupported on their distributions.

Thus, if you care about your data at all, please use a modern kernel.


Meow!
-- 
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⣾⠁⢰⠒⠀⣿⡁ Imagine there are bandits in your house, your kid is bleeding out,
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ the house is on fire, and seven big-ass trumpets are playing in the
⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀ sky.  Your cat demands food.  The priority should be obvious...

Re: btrfs on RHEL7 (kernel 3.10.0) production ready?

[Chris Murphy]

On Sat, Aug 3, 2019 at 4:09 AM Ulli Horlacher
<framstag@rus.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote:
>
> I have RHEL 7 and CentOS 7.6 servers with kernel 3.10.0 and btrfs-progs v4.9.1
> Is btrfs there ready for production usage(*)?

No, Btrfs is deprecated in RHEL.
https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7/html/7.4_Release_Notes/chap-Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-7.4_Release_Notes-Deprecated_Functionality.html

Discussion here:
https://lwn.net/Articles/729488/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14907771
https://access.redhat.com/discussions/3138231

If you want to use Btrfs in production, and have distribution support,
you'd need to consider SUSE. If you want a similar feature set to
Btrfs, but remain supported on RHEL, you'd need to discuss it with
your Red Hat account manager.

If upstream support for Btrfs is adequate then you'll want to use a
recent stable kernel, and have a test and update strategy for
balancing out the risk of incorporating new kernels as they're
released vs the risk of using a fixed kernel version that grows stale
over time.


-- 
Chris Murphy