I am considering moving from my FreeNAS system to Rockstor-beta. I am aware that it is still in progress and needs polishing, new features and has a few bugs all around.
My main question is: Is it safe in terms of data-loss? I plan to have a regular snapshot backup to another disk (in the same server) and potentially also a snapshot to another PC.
I don’t mind occasional bugs or UI quirkiness, my main concern is if it is a danger for my data or not…
I also want to say I am very impressed by the devs in how they support and answer everyones questions and are always friendly and forthcoming. It is a joy to interact with you!
If by beta you are referencing our current Rockstor 4 testing channel then I would say yes, with the caveat that all non trivial software, including file systems, have bugs. And bugs in file systems not infrequently challenge data integrity. But very few file systems actually have any form of check-summing. Where as in btrfs it is a central feature of it’s design, akin to ZFS (the FreeNAS fs) in that regard.
In our Rockstor 4 variant, now at release candidate 5, we use an unmodified Leap 15.2 kernel/btrfs stack as the base. And in that respect we are identical to a Leap 15.2 system but cut down, more akin to a JeOS variant of Leap. But the core of the system that manages files is that of Leap 15.2. However a default Leap 15.2 only uses btrfs for the system drive. Where as we use it for the data drives as well. But the openSUSE/SLES folks very actively back-port btrfs fixes as their community and enterprise offerings depend upon it’s robustness for at least their system drives.
It is also now, I believe, safe to say that btrfs (with active backports of fixes) is rapidly gaining community at large approval as a dependable file system.
But in this matter I am not an independent advocate .
If you have concerns I would do general searches for btrfs and keep in mind that the openSUSE/SuSE folks do actively maintain their btrfs components. That is one of the main reasons we moved from our prior CentOS base to our new ‘Built on openSUSE’ variant. The installer is, as yet, only available as a build you own DIY endeavour via the following instructions:
And the forum thread to keep an eye on for this new variant is this one:
Hope that helps to clear things up and hopefully we will get some less biased opinion interjected into this thread. I’m obviously a bit of a btrfs fan myself given my involvement in this project. But we do have many ‘happy campers’ who have been with us for some time now and I think our recent move to openSUSE Leap as our base, which bring with it a btrfs that is upstream maintained, is a major and welcome change to our prior CentOS days where we simply added a rather poorly updated (on our side) elrepo ml-kernel.
So in short, The Rockstor Project as of version 4 onwards is, in it’s simplest form, a usability front end to what ever openSUSE/SuSE-SLES dish out to look after their OS offering but on the system side. They both still default to using XFS for the home (read data) partition. But I like to think we can offer enhanced NAS capabilities, at least in the Linux world, by our adoption of btrfs for the data as well.
As always no data is safe unless there are 3 copies ideally in 2 or more geographically distinct locations. But you already knew that :).
Also, thanks for the kind words. I’m also happy with our community interactions and this is down in a major way to active participation by our forum/community members in helping to flag any suspect posts. So if you do see any questionable or unfriendly posts here then just flag them as it is inevitable these days that we get bots and the like wishing to use our admittedly rather niche platform inappropriatly.
Also another great project to consider, DIY linux NAS wise, is openmediavault.org. A rising tide floats all boats and we are only one. But one of not too many NAS wise as it goes.
I set up a Rockstar 4 (beta) NAS back in Sept/Oct, running alongside my existing old NAS. After a month of trialling and testing it was clear that it was Rock-solid (ahem, I’ve used that pun way too often now), and promoted it to main NAS usage and my old device became my backup.
Go for it
Just to update you: Today I reinstalled my NAS with rockstor (previously FreeNAS). I have 4 rock-ons running, two of which I made myself and one where I had to make a fix
I was surprised how fast it actually worked in the end. The kinks in the UI were sometimes annoying, but no deal-breaker really.
.
