I've been hearing awesome things about ZFS for years now. Unfortunately, it can never be part of the Linux kernel due to licensing issues, so we're stuck with "your 1's and 0's are being held by a pre-1.0 version of a filesystem invented by a dead company". How far has btrfs come in its support of ZFS-like features? Still need a few more years? I'll be switching as soon as it's marked stable.
I wonder if the performance might be better if a good 16GB USB stick was used for the OS drive instead of an old laptop drive? The OS needs a lot of random access, but doesn't take up much space.
I also wonder why the author went with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS instead of 12.04 LTS, which would give him two more years of peace of mind. It's been a few weeks since 12.04 came out, so it's pretty stable. It does get kernel updates more often that I'd prefer, though, and GNOME 2 is gone.
I find your assessment of the Linux filesystem situation to be inaccurately, and surprisingly, negative. "Stuck with" implies little potential for change, when there are several filesystems which are being developed at a swift pace, solving tough problems with vigor and ingenuity. btrfs is coming along just fine. I can't think of any place with more filesystem development going on than Linux.
Ext4 is still pretty active for a "done" filesystem, too: The last 12 months saw work on online resizing, support for bigger block sizes, a cleanup of mount options, ...
Sorry if I came across as negative. The "stuck with" was a reference to ZFS's status as a pre-1.0 PPA, not a reference to Linux filesystems as a whole.
On the other hand, the only in-kernel Linux filesystem that can match ZFS's feature set (for example, resizing a RAID array while the filesystem is online) seems to be btrfs, which probably won't be marked stable for at least another year or two. The latest developments to XFS and ext4, though interesting, aren't particularly relevant if you're looking to build a server like what the article describes.
I'll just note that it is the implementation of ZFS that is pre-1.0, not the filesystem itself. The ZFS filesystem itself has been production-ready for several years now. That said, I might use the current Linux implementation for my non-critical data, but for anything important I'd stick to Solaris/OpenIndiana. There's also a decent implementation on FreeBSD, but I'm not a fan of that OS.
Actually, 12.04.1 comes out on August 23rd, and LTS users are encouraged to upgrade to the first point release (which would presumably have some useful fixes). Indeed, update-manager tells you that there is no upgrade available if you tell it to look for LTS releases only.
My dev machines are running 12.04, though, and haven't run into any major issues yet (knock on wood); my daily driver netbook runs 12.10 because I like it like that.
since it is a server--not a desktop, there is less need for the odd linux app. For that reason, I bought a used Ultra 40 for $200, and run Solaris 11. Its fast, rock solid, and free. My current uptime is over 9 months. The only negative with Solaris is the lack of every last odd linux app. The only negative with ZFS in a home environment is inability to grow the number devices in a RAID Z.
I wonder if the performance might be better if a good 16GB USB stick was used for the OS drive instead of an old laptop drive? The OS needs a lot of random access, but doesn't take up much space.
I also wonder why the author went with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS instead of 12.04 LTS, which would give him two more years of peace of mind. It's been a few weeks since 12.04 came out, so it's pretty stable. It does get kernel updates more often that I'd prefer, though, and GNOME 2 is gone.