RE: [PATCH 0/6] power_of_2 emulation support for NVMe ZNS devices

Matias Bjørling
2022-03-15T13:15:07Z

> >
> >All that said - if there are people willing to do the work and it doesn't have a
> negative impact on performance, code quality, maintenance complexity, etc.
> then there isn't anything saying support can't be added - but it does seem like
> it’s a lot of work, for little overall benefits to applications and the host users.
>
> Exactly.
>
> Patches in the block layer are trivial. This is running in production loads without
> issues. I have tried to highlight the benefits in previous benefits and I believe
> you understand them.
>
> Support for ZoneFS seems easy too. We have an early POC for btrfs and it
> seems it can be done. We sign up for these 2.
>
> As for F2FS and dm-zoned, I do not think these are targets at the moment. If
> this is the path we follow, these will bail out at mkfs time.
>
> If we can agree on the above, I believe we can start with the code that enables
> the existing customers and build support for butrfs and ZoneFS in the next few
> months.
>
> What do you think?

I would suggest to do it in a single shot, i.e., a single patchset, which enables all the internal users in the kernel (including f2fs and others). That way end-users do not have to worry about the difference of PO2/NPO2 zones and it'll help reduce the burden on long-term maintenance.