[GTALUG] From BTRFS to what?

[Alvin Starr]

On 09/05/2017 09:42 AM, Christopher Browne via talk wrote:
> On 4 September 2017 at 20:03, Scott Sullivan via talk <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:
>> On 03/09/17 02:12 PM, William Park via talk wrote:
>>> On Sun, Sep 03, 2017 at 05:52:12PM +0000, Dhaval Giani wrote:
>>>> On Sun, Sep 3, 2017 at 1:41 PM William Park via talk <talk at gtalug.org>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> Now, I read (it's an old news, though) that BTRFS is being "deprecated"
>>>>> by Redhat, and presumably others will follow.
>>>>
>>>> Where have you read this news? As far as I know btrfs is actively being
>>>> developed and no one is stopping development.
>>>
>>> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/16/red_hat_banishes_btrfs_from_rhel/
>>>
>>>
>>> https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7/html/7.4_Release_Notes/chap-Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-7.4_Release_Notes-Deprecated_Functionality.html
>>>
>>>
>>> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Red-Hat-Deprecates-Btrfs-Again
>>>
>> This really should be read as 'if you call us to exercise your support
>> contract, this piece isn't covered'.
>>
>> You'll get the same response for openldap(*), as they want you to use their
>> IDM product. It doesn't make openldap any less in quality or utility.
>>
>> * Based on recent real-world experience.
>> --
>> Scott Sullivan
> Some years ago (I'd guess 2005-ish, so it has been a while), I recall
> Red Hat support declining to respond to issues relating to OpenSSL
> because we had (I forget the exact term) 'unsupported software' in
> that we were using the JFS kernel modules and RPM packages that,
> despite being included, were apparently "not supported."
>
> They were fairly keen not to respond to *anything* because we had JFS
> (that they chose to include, but not support).  That seemed really
> weaselly to me at the time.  It would be one thing had we had a custom
> compiled kernel with our own wacky stuff, but everything *was* stock;
> the JFS builds were *provided by Red Hat*.
>
> Ever since, I have not been highly enthralled by the merits of "Red
> Hat support."
That is kind of weaselly but in line with just about every other 
enterprise support organization out there.
First update to the latest software(images of the tape player in the IT 
Croud).
Oh your using something we don't support .... Sorry...
Ever deal wit Microsoft support?
Cisco support?
Oracle support?
.......
> It *is* troublesome to me that many people (and I have seen that
> mentioned on this thread) consider "supported by Red Hat" to be
> somehow essential to "usable on Linux."  It puts Red Hat on a pedestal
> which is harmful in multiple ways.
For me now I use redhat mostly because I am familiar with the setup and 
its a comfortable environment.
But I moved from Debian to RH years ago because I was spending all my 
time patching kernels and rebuilding systems.
Redhat had quick security fixes and they were easy to install.
This is something like 15 years ago and the landscape has changed 
dramatically since then.

The thing about RH is that its an easy sell corporately.
You can point to a company that "supports" the OS and check off that box 
in the "due diligence" form.
The same thing is true of SUSE.

Debian and Ubuntu don't seem to have the same support offerings but I 
could be wrong on that point.
> - It gives them power that they shouldn't have;
>
> - It enacts "facts" like those that were the point of the original
> question...  Is BTRFS any good?  Should you use it?  Or is it needful
> to migrate to something else?   The answers that seem to arrive have
> the shape "Well, RHAT doesn't want to support it, so everyone should
> consider it obsolete and unsupportable."
That is not even close to a real characterization of the conversation.
The point has been that losing a major distribution, and RH is a major 
distribution,  just takes away from the momentum that a project may have.
Take a look at Xen and its uptake outside Citrix once RH moved to KVM.

>
> - I seem to recall RHAT developing ext4; unless things have further
> changed, that ought to mean that the only thing they are keen to
> support is ext4.  XFS, NILFS2, BTRFS, JFS, everything else, need not
> apply.
>
> That's all pretty harmful to my mind.

 From my perspective BTRFS needs to handle tiered storage before its 
really useful and that appears to be a long way off.
Most of the other features of BTRFS are just as well supported by other 
Linux storage management tools.


-- 
Alvin Starr                   ||   land:  (905)513-7688
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