The Software RAID Inflection Point
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@travisdh1 said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@scottalanmiller said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@Dashrender said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@scottalanmiller said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@travisdh1 said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@scottalanmiller said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@Dashrender said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
You said it's supported by the OS vendors - since so many other OS vendors don't work together, why would I assume they would be working together.
Because we are talking about a single thing that they work together on. Shared projects exist everywhere from childhood through university to the professional world. We are talking about the MD product, no matter how many people work on it or where they come from, that doesn't imply and should not lead someone to think that each person helping is then making their own product. We have a thousand contributors to MangoLassi, but no one assumes that there are one thousand different communities. What makes MD a special case?
Because @Dashrender wasn't aware of how it worked. I can totally see how someone could be very confused if they are not familiar with the Linux ecosystem.
Even if you don't know it is Linux and assume it is something totally different, there is just the one product being discussed, though. Even if this was closed source and made by Microsoft and Oracle we'd still assume collaboration since only one product was the result.
Just to pull a little piece from my larger post - We are comparing RAID something generic to MD - which I know now is a specific product/software solution. This was a huge root of my misunderstanding.
Where were we doing that?
Forever, it's why I pointed out that MD is actually a part of the Kernel. poof @Dashrender gets it.
Are you sure? WHat did we compare MD to?
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@Dashrender said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
Here a sorta on topic ask - LVM, is it generic and the specific implementations in each distro is different? or is LVM the exact same on all Linux distros that use it?
How is it on Windows?
LVM is a generic concept. The common LVM on Linux is LVM2 (yes, that is its name) but ZFS has its own LVM and BtrFS has its own. Windows has an LVM called Dynamic Disks. Many RAID controllers have an LVM of their own as well. SANs do, that's what makes the LUNs. AIX' LVM is just called LVM. Sun's is called Solstice, but there is one in ZFS, of course.
So you have to be careful, you have "an LVM" or "LVM". But, again, don't bring Linux into it thinking that Linux is special. It's not a Linux thing. Linux people just tend to talk about technical details more than people from other systems.
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@scottalanmiller said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@travisdh1 said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@scottalanmiller said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@Dashrender said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@scottalanmiller said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@travisdh1 said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@scottalanmiller said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@Dashrender said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
You said it's supported by the OS vendors - since so many other OS vendors don't work together, why would I assume they would be working together.
Because we are talking about a single thing that they work together on. Shared projects exist everywhere from childhood through university to the professional world. We are talking about the MD product, no matter how many people work on it or where they come from, that doesn't imply and should not lead someone to think that each person helping is then making their own product. We have a thousand contributors to MangoLassi, but no one assumes that there are one thousand different communities. What makes MD a special case?
Because @Dashrender wasn't aware of how it worked. I can totally see how someone could be very confused if they are not familiar with the Linux ecosystem.
Even if you don't know it is Linux and assume it is something totally different, there is just the one product being discussed, though. Even if this was closed source and made by Microsoft and Oracle we'd still assume collaboration since only one product was the result.
Just to pull a little piece from my larger post - We are comparing RAID something generic to MD - which I know now is a specific product/software solution. This was a huge root of my misunderstanding.
Where were we doing that?
Forever, it's why I pointed out that MD is actually a part of the Kernel. poof @Dashrender gets it.
Are you sure?
Yes.
WHat did we compare MD to?
Nothing.
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@Dashrender said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
or is LVM the exact same on all Linux distros that use it?
- LVM2 is part of the kernel and the same everywhere that uses it across distros.
- The LVM of ZFS is the same on every system running ZFS
- The LVM of BtrFS is the same on every system running BtrFS
Again, picture Notepad++. Is it the same Notepad++ on different versions of Windows, Mac OSX and Fedora? Yes. No matter where you find it, Notepad++ is the same piece of software.
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@travisdh1 said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
Are you sure?
Yes.
WHat did we compare MD to?
Nothing.
YOu just contradicted yourself I think. I asked if you were sure that we compared MD RAID to something, you said yes. When I asked what it was to, you said nothing.
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@travisdh1 said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@scottalanmiller said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@Dashrender said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@scottalanmiller said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@travisdh1 said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@scottalanmiller said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@Dashrender said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
You said it's supported by the OS vendors - since so many other OS vendors don't work together, why would I assume they would be working together.
Because we are talking about a single thing that they work together on. Shared projects exist everywhere from childhood through university to the professional world. We are talking about the MD product, no matter how many people work on it or where they come from, that doesn't imply and should not lead someone to think that each person helping is then making their own product. We have a thousand contributors to MangoLassi, but no one assumes that there are one thousand different communities. What makes MD a special case?
Because @Dashrender wasn't aware of how it worked. I can totally see how someone could be very confused if they are not familiar with the Linux ecosystem.
Even if you don't know it is Linux and assume it is something totally different, there is just the one product being discussed, though. Even if this was closed source and made by Microsoft and Oracle we'd still assume collaboration since only one product was the result.
Just to pull a little piece from my larger post - We are comparing RAID something generic to MD - which I know now is a specific product/software solution. This was a huge root of my misunderstanding.
Where were we doing that?
Forever, it's why I pointed out that MD is actually a part of the Kernel. poof @Dashrender gets it.
But that added tons and tons of confusion. Now suddenly we are lost talking about Linux which has really nothing to do with the conversation. You CAN separate MD from Linux, which we talked about a bit in the thread, and then it would be even more confusing, even though MD would remain a single thing.
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@scottalanmiller said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@travisdh1 said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
Are you sure?
Yes.
WHat did we compare MD to?
Nothing.
YOu just contradicted yourself I think. I asked if you were sure that we compared MD RAID to something, you said yes. When I asked what it was to, you said nothing.
I said yes to the fact that I know @Dashrender didn't understand that RAID is a generic concept while MD is a specific thing.
We never did compare MD to anything through most of this discussion that I remember.
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@travisdh1 said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@scottalanmiller said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@travisdh1 said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
Are you sure?
Yes.
WHat did we compare MD to?
Nothing.
YOu just contradicted yourself I think. I asked if you were sure that we compared MD RAID to something, you said yes. When I asked what it was to, you said nothing.
I said yes to the fact that I know @Dashrender didn't understand that RAID is a generic concept while MD is a specific thing.
We never did compare MD to anything through most of this discussion that I remember.
Ah, that was not what I had intended to ask.
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@Dashrender said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@scottalanmiller said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@Dashrender said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
OK I'm starting to see where you are going with this. A single name to you implies single product - and typically I agree - but again, a complete lack of understanding of the Linux something or other just makes it really difficult for me to follow/understand the rules.
But it's the same on Windows. Linux has nothing to do with this, that MD is now inside of Linux is coincidence. It didn't have any effect on the conversation and isn't important. If you stop thinking of Linux as a special case and treat it like any other normal product, all of the confusion stops. It's only by assuming that Linux has special rules or is different does it get confusing.
If this conversation was about NTKernel and Windows Software RAID nothing would change.
I'll stop blaming Linux in this case - and say I didn't know MD was a product, knowing that it's a single thing, supported by a specific group for use where ever they allow it's use, OK I go it now.
If you thought MD was a concept, what did you think that it was?
.... Offline answer.... "a generic term for software RAID on Linux."
This helps me to understand how we got to where we were.
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@scottalanmiller said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
@Dashrender said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
or is LVM the exact same on all Linux distros that use it?
- LVM2 is part of the kernel and the same everywhere that uses it across distros.
- The LVM of ZFS is the same on every system running ZFS
- The LVM of BtrFS is the same on every system running BtrFS
Again, picture Notepad++. Is it the same Notepad++ on different versions of Windows, Mac OSX and Fedora? Yes. No matter where you find it, Notepad++ is the same piece of software.
Sure, but a note taking app is the concept and Notepad++ is an implementation (thing) that is a note taking app... so there software RAID, and MD is an implementation of a software RAID. That is where my misunderstanding was - I thought that an MD RAID was just a generic term for software RAID on linux (though I have no idea why they would have a need for a term for software RAID, that's just where my mind went).
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So we are talking offline and a lot of the confusion doesn't appear to be Linux based confusion, but actually Windows confusion that is then carrying over. So here is something that people probably never think about...
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@Dashrender said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
I thought that an MD RAID was just a generic term for software RAID on linux (though I have no idea why they would have a need for a term for software RAID, that's just where my mind went).
Right, and that's the leap that I didn't follow. I had no way to know that that was what you were thinking.
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The "included" software RAID in the Linux kernel is called MD. But Linux often ships with other software RAID too that is not MD, like ZFS and BtrFS. Plus you can add in your own whenever you want. Some third parties make software RAID for Linux.
In Windows, the included software RAID from the kernel is confusingly called Windows Software RAID. And like on Linux you can add in other software RAID implementations like Storage Spaces or those from third parties.
One of the most confusing is that Linux' native BtrFS is also available on Windows. So you can have Windows with BtrFS as both the LVM or the software RAID or both.
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@scottalanmiller said in The Software RAID Inflection Point:
One of the most confusing is that Linux' native BtrFS is also available on Windows. So you can have Windows with BtrFS as both the LVM or the software RAID or both.
I didn't know that BtrFS is available for Windows, just another reason to start using it.
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One of the confusing pieces here is that Linux actually does things more clearly but the Windows world is so confusing that if you carry that confusion into the Linux world, it makes things harder. Windows rarely uses or discloses the names of their product components. So Windows Software RAID is used to describe part of the Windows OS. But what if you have software RAID on Windows that is not Windows Software RAID? Windows Admins typically have no good terminology to discuss this, even though it is common. They just.... don't know what's going on and don't document it. But in Linux, we have the terms on hand all of the time (MD, ZFS, whatever.) So the Linux side isn't as bad as it seems, but if you are used to a weird blend of generic names being used as if they are specifics from the Windows world and assume that the Linux world is just as crazy, then it seems crazy.
