Upcoming 8.3 & ZFS v28 - can I stay on ZFS v15 forever?

[freshfeesh]

one of the things jpaetzel says in his "musings" thread on FreeNAS 8.3 is that the included ZFS v28, in addition to offering some cool new features, is slower than the v15. I have low ambitions for the complexity of my FreeNAS system (at home, primarily backup, 2 users max, old hardware), but I figure that I'll want to update to the latest versions of FreeNAS for security if nothing else. At the same time, I'd rather not perform an updgrade for features that I won't use and will reduce performance (e.g. ZFS v15->v28).

I've been told that my current v15 pool will happily remain a v15 pool under FreeNAS 8.3, unless I manually upgrade it via some command line stuff. Is there any reason to believe that this won't remain true for the medium future (a few years)?

Will I have any trouble adding another RaidZ1 array to my v15 pool if I need to expand capacity?

Will I be any worse off in any disaster recovery scenarios if I keep up with FreeNAS upgrades but keep my ZFS pool at v15?

Thanks

 

[ProtoSD]

I've been told that my current v15 pool will happily remain a v15 pool under FreeNAS 8.3, unless I manually upgrade it via some command line stuff. Is there any reason to believe that this won't remain true for the medium future (a few years)?

I'm pretty sure there's nothing that will force you to upgrade your pool, but "a few years" is anyone's guess.

Will I have any trouble adding another RaidZ1 array to my v15 pool if I need to expand capacity?

That's a good question, this might be one of those things that could force you to choose.

Will I be any worse off in any disaster recovery scenarios if I keep up with FreeNAS upgrades but keep my ZFS pool at v15?

Thanks

I think v28 definitely offers more reliable/stable features that could make a difference in this situation. We've already seen numerous users here where their pools won't finish resilvering, failing to import, and a few other things that booting from a v28 enabled system allowed them to recover from.

If you have

low ambitions for the complexity of my FreeNAS system (at home, primarily backup, 2 users max, old hardware)

I really doubt the performance difference will be significant enough to make a difference.

 

[freshfeesh]

Hmmm. Glad I asked. My priorities are 1)data integrity 2)absence of time-sucking 3)speed 4)features/complexity. I was only aware that v28 improved on my point 4 at the expense of 3. If it's more reliable/stable that's my answer right there. Many thanks.