On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 1:39 PM, Simon Schneider <schneida.simon@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi > > I was about to use btrfs for my new SSD but I couldn't find any reason why I > shouldn't stay with my normal LVM and ext4 setup. Is there any particular > reason why everyone is so crazy about that new fs? for me at least i like how simple it is to try stuff ... one of my favorite features is throwaway snapshots for testing various *whatever*. i can setup a chroot and instantly clone it and throw away just as fast; IIRC `mkchrootpkg` does this by default it it detects btrfs. LZO compression on my eee s101 netbook (32GB "aftermarket" Runcore SSD) has made a *definite* difference in system performance. ... and also a simple rsync (inplace) script can give you fast/efficient "folding"/differential backups with very little work (and this will work even better once offline [or online i guess] de-dup is rocking) i also use btrfs *heavily* in conjunction with namespace containers (eg, lxc-tools and friends) -- btrfs is the perfect companion. i can create hundreds of development/staging/production containers in seconds (if i actually needed them that fast ;-). it's the realization of namespaces at FS level. i dont know much about LVM or soft-raid setups, and im sure much of the above can be achieved with --bind mounts, layers of this-and-that ... but btrfs is simple and effective. lastly -- and this is maybe a growing trend -- LVM works at the block level whereas btrfs is object level; btrfs can have object policies (eg RAID) with some objects partially in one state or another (eg compression), intelligent rebuilds (doesn't have to behave like a generic/dumb block device) ... this means things like RAID1 only EVER have 2 copies of an object ... even if there are 15 disks each object will only have 2 complete copies so space can be utilized more effectively ... this also helps to make full use of arrays with mismatched disk sizes/capabilities. <---(these last bits were discussed on the list recently, and i may be stating it incorrectly. by all means, correct me if necessary) -- C Anthony
