== Today on Linux, ZFS is your only real choice for an advanced filesystem Yesterday I wrote about what I consider [[advanced filesystems are in general ../tech/NextGenerationFilesystem]], namely filesystems with the minimum feature of checksums so you know when your data has been damaged and ideally with some ability to use redundancy to repair from damage. As far as I know, today on Linux there are only two filesystems that are advanced in this way: [[btrfs https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page]] and ZFS, via [[ZFS on Linux http://zfsonlinux.org/]]. (If you don't care about disk checksums, you have lots of choice among perfectly good filesystems. I would just run ext4 unless you had a good reason to know that eg XFS was a better choice in your particular environment; it's what I do and what most people do, so ext4 gets a lot of exercise and attention.) In theory, you might choose either and you might even default to btrfs as the in-kernel solution. In practice, I believe that you only have one real choice today and that choice is ZFS on Linux. This is not because ZFS might be better than btrfs on a technical level ([[although I believe it is BtrfsCoreMistake]]), it is simply because *people keep having problems with btrfs* (the latest example I was exposed to was [[this one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8765088]]). Far too many things I read about btrfs wind up saying stuff like 'it's been stable for a few months since the last problem' or 'I had a problem recently but it wasn't too bad' or the like. Btrfs does not appear to be stable yet and it doesn't appear likely to be stable any time soon; everything I wrote in 2013 about [[why not to consider btrfs yet BtrfsWhyNotYet]] still apply. Btrfs will hopefully someday be one of the filesystems of the future. But it is not the filesystem of today unless you feel very daring. If you want an advanced filesystem today on Linux, your only real option is ZFS on Linux. Now, ZoL is not perfect. People do still report problems with it from time to time, including kernel memory issues, and you will want to test it in your environment to make sure it works okay. But from all the reports I've read there are plenty of people running it in production in various ways (in more demanding circumstances than [[mine ZFSOnLinuxExperience]]) and it isn't blowing up in their faces. In short, ZFS on Linux is something that you can reasonably consider today, and in practice things will probably work fine. I think that considering btrfs today is demonstrably relatively crazy. (I'm aware that Facebook is using btrfs internally to some degree. Facebook also has Chris Mason working for them to find and fix their btrfs problems and likely a team that immediately packages those changes up into custom Facebook kernels. [[See also https://twitter.com/btrfs/status/450522091087880192]].)