On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 2:55 PM, Adam Leventhal <a...@eng.sun.com> wrote:
> Drive vendors, it would seem, have an incentive to make their "500GB" > drives > as small as possible. Should ZFS then choose some amount of padding at the > end of each device and chop it off as insurance against a slightly smaller > drive? How much of the device should it chop off? Conversely, should users > have the option to use the full extent of the drives they've paid for, say, > if they're using a vendor that already provides that guarantee? Drive vendors, it would seem, have incentive to make their 500GB drives as cheap as possible. The two are not necessarily one and the same. And again, I say take a look at the market today, figure out a percentage, and call it done. I don't think you'll find a lot of users crying foul over losing 1% of their drive space when they don't already cry foul over the false advertising that is drive sizes today. In any case, you might as well can ZFS entirely because it's not really fair that users are losing disk space to raid and metadata... see where this argument is going? I really, REALLY doubt you're going to have users screaming at you for losing 1% (or whatever the figure ends up being) to a right-sizing algorithm. In fact, I would bet the average user will NEVER notice if you don't tell them ahead of time. Sort of like the average user had absolutely no clue that 500GB drives were of slightly differing block numbers, and he'd end up screwed six months down the road if he couldn't source an identical drive. I have two disks in one of my systems... both maxtor 500GB drives, purchased at the same time shortly after the buyout. One is a rebadged Seagate, one is a true, made in China Maxtor. Different block numbers... same model drive, purchased at the same time. Wasn't zfs supposed to be about using software to make up for deficiencies in hardware? It would seem this request is exactly that... > > > > You know, sort of like you not letting people choose their raid layout... > > Yes, I'm not saying it shouldn't be done. I'm asking what the right answer > might be. The *right answer* in simplifying storage is not "manually slice up every disk you insert into the system to avoid this issue". The right answer is "right-size by default, give admins the option to skip it if they really want". Sort of like I'd argue the right answer on the 7000 is to give users the raid options you do today by default, and allow them to lay it out themselves from some sort of advanced *at your own risk* mode, whether that be command line (the best place I'd argue) or something else. --Tim
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