ZFS snapshots vs Windows VSS when it comes to performance

[pernils]

I have some question/thoughts that I can't find on the net.

The amount of VSS snapshot you can do on windows is by default 64. You can edit the register for be able to have more.

Today I'm running schedule of every 10 minut with zfs snapshot. I wonder what would happen if I move to win server with the same schedule.
One drawback with win is that you can't have multi VSS schema from what I understand but that aside.

Would the windows server be bough down to crawling state or would it steam ahead like my freenas box if you pound it every 10 minutes with snapshot?

Having 100 GB of cad data with 6 engineers R/W + 25 clients that just reads data.


http://backupchain.com/i/how-to-delete-all-vss-shadows-and-orphaned-shadows

https://thatcouldbeaproblem.com/?tag=maxshadowcopies

https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/379803-maxshadowcopies-and-windows-7-client-limits

 

[rs225]

I don't even know very much about Windows VSS, but I can tell you it is a bad idea.

ZFS was designed to do snapshots and has no limit.
VSS was hacked in to NTFS, and therefore has a default limit of 64.

If you want snapshots on Windows, you need to use Storage Spaces with ReFS.

 

[pernils]

I also don't know much about VSS (never used it).

As a end user and also responsible to deliver the best file share experience for my other 6 engineers college I must way in all aspect of the chosen technology.

The truth today is that freebsd 10 don't play so well with samba.
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/performance-9-3-vs-9-10-folder-browsing-linux.50744/

And when it comes to heavily use of snapshot schema I have the feeling that my share is slowing down. I have no full pool or fragmentation to speak about.
My own guideline is to not have more then around 300-400 snapshot on the volume. Move beyond this and your share will become less snappy.
It was while when I was testing this out so perhaps I should let it loose just to verify my guideline is valid.


From the net you can read that VSS should be on separate volume for performance reason but no more in depth of comparison of other technologies.

The most google hits with VSS is backup related. VSS or not the only thing I want is to have the "Restore previous version" functionality. With ZFS it seems you can have unlimited in that aspect.

It's the last piece of the puzzle that zfs+smba falls short, namely snappiness while you browsing around the share. And this is the first thing a end user will notice.

( I have now set up on a win2008, VSS with 10 minutes intervall for 8 hour a day just to see what will happen :) )

 

[rs225]

It is possible you might want to post this as a Samba question, or review any of the sticky/FAQs on Samba in the Sharing section. The slowness could be from another cause.

If the slowness is from snapshots, then it would be the clients somehow browsing into the snapshots in the background. I wouldn't expect that to happen except when you are doing a Restore Previous Version operation.