Re: [PATCH 7/9] exofs: mkexofs

Jeff Garzik
2009-01-13T14:18:25Z

Alan Cox wrote:
>> It seems unlikely drive manufacturers would get excited about a
>> sub-optimal solution that does not even approach using the full
>> potential of the product.
>
> You forgot the more important people
>
> Mr Customer, would you like your data centre to use a new magic OSD fs or
> the existing one you trust.
>
> Now in my experience that is a *dumb* question because the answer is
> obvious...

The choice is between "new magic OSD fs" and "new fs that used to be
ext4, before we hacked it up".

"existing one you trust" is not an option...

>> Plus, given the existence of an OSD-specific filesystem (exofs, at the
>> very least), it seems unlikely that end users who own OSDs would choose
>> the sub-optimal solution when an OSD-specific filesystem exists.
>
> Actually until you can show zillions of users stably using them the
> people with the money won't buy them in the first place 8)

Yeah, at this point the discussion devolves into talk of carts, horses,
chickens and eggs... :)

>>> ready for the consumer market until 2011. That's not really going to
>>> convince the disk vendors that OSD based devices should be marketed
>>> today.
>> And you have a similar sales job and lag time, when hacking -- read
>> destabilizing -- a filesystem to work with OSDs as well as sector-based
>> devices.
>
> 2011 sounds optimistic for major OSD adoption in any space except for
> flash storage where OSD type knowledge means you can do much better jobs
> on erase management.

His number, not mine...

At this point OSD is a fun and interesting research project.

Overall, I think Linux should have OSD support so that we are ready for
whatever the future brings. Even if OSD goes nowhere, it will still
have more users than many of the existing Linux drivers and architectures :)

Jeff