Snapshots

[Greg Freemyer <freemyer@NorcrossGroup.com>]

XFS team,

I've just become aware of a problem on another Journaled file-system (it is not a Linux filesystem).

With this filesystem, the meta-data can be out of sync during a snapshot operation.

If this happens, the snapshot is corrupt and can't be counted on to be a valid backup.

They are introducing a new feature for it: "freeze/thaw".

The idea is that you issue a freeze prior to taking the snapshot and a thaw after the snapshot is complete.

Does XFS have any similar problems, and if so are there fixes in place, or in the pipeline.

Note that this was a very occasional problem on the other filesystem, so anecdotal statements of it "works fine for me" may not mean much.


Greg Freemyer