A French user has discovered that ZFS is now 'officially' supported in Leopard [French], while testing the latest build of Apple's upcoming operating system. Indeed it is now possible to create disk images or partitions formated in ZFS (screen capture included). However, it seems that it is not possible yet to install the OS on a ZFS partition.
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Member since:2005-07-06
I would say that ZFS is second to Reiser4. Reiser4 is a far more innovative filesystem that really addresses the point that byte-streams are just byte-streams, and that any distinction between metadata and data is just arbitrary. Furthermore, once the distinction between data and metadata is eliminated, and small files are stored efficiently, it becomes a completely usable design for apps to stop storing small record in custom databases, and use the filesystem for such tasks.
That said, its nice that OS X is getting a decent filesystem. The longer I use OS X, the more it becomes painfully apparent how badly the kernel sucks, and any step forward is a much needed one.
Member since:2005-10-12
"The longer I use OS X, the more it becomes painfully apparent how badly the kernel sucks...."
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It would really be worth an article, if you can find the time, to explain this at reasonable length. Agree or disagree, it will certainly be worth careful reading. Hope you can find the time.
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-11-23
he longer I use OS X, the more it becomes painfully apparent how badly the kernel sucks, and any step forward is a much needed one.
Yeah, you are telling us that you are able to talk directly with the kernel.
How many people can feel how bad is a kernel while using an application ...
Member since:2005-11-23
Well regarding your comments on ZFS, I will just quote a Sun engineer.
ReiserFS v4 may be a significant step forward for Linux file systems, but looking through the feature list on its Web site, I don't see anything like the ability to add storage space dynamically or integrated checksums to protect against data corruption. ReiserFS v4 is also not 128-bit, so its ceiling is much lower than that of ZFS.
http://blogs.sun.com/dilpreet/entry/nice_s10_article
Member since:2005-07-24
I'm not a big Reiser4 fan. While it is certainly interesting, one must be careful to sort the hype from the reality. And Namesys is very good at hype. I lost some faith in it when it was exposed that benchmarks on the Namesys site had the phases of the benchmark where ext3 beats Reiser4 (and badly) systematically removed, a situation that still has not been corrected years after Hans admitted to it on lkml. (I can dig up a link if requested.)
Plus, looking over the threads on lkml, I get the impression that the most interesting stuff, like file as directory, is not necessarily safe.
Furthermore, the most interesting features are not ones that developers could really use. For example, its database-like speed with large numbers of objects, and the file as directory semantics might make it easier to to write certain kinds of programs, even eliminating the need for a database... as long as you are writing for Linux only and don't care about portability. If you do care about portability, you have to write it to run on other filesystems anyway, and that same code would work on Linux. So why bother writing it 2 ways?
ZFS has features that would be useful right now, and without the drawbacks, which is why I give it the nod over Reiser4.
Member since:2005-07-07
I would say that ZFS is second to Reiser4. Reiser4 is a far more innovative filesystem that really addresses the point that byte-streams are just byte-streams, and that any distinction between metadata and data is just arbitrary.
I disagree. If meta-data and data distinction is the only feature that marks innovation in filesystems then maybe Reiser4 is more innovative.
ZFS completely redefines storage on a computer by making it more like main memory. What do you do on a box if you need more memory? Add a DIMM and presto more memory instantly no extra work required. With ZFS you need more storage space for your filesystems just add a disk or too and presto instantly more space, no extra work required.
Snapshots, clones and block checksums make it far more innovative than any other filesystem I am aware of. More users can use those features right away than one innovative feature in Reiser4 that only developers can use that too if it becomes popular enough.
The snapshot and cloning features for ZFS makes it perfect for Timemachine in leopard. Snapshots and clones don't take up extra space because of ZFS' COW semantics and are pretty instantaneous. ZFS can create volumes on which you can overlay other filesystem types. Apple could make a ZFS volume and overlay HFS+ on it and have all the ZFS features like cloning and snapshots and maintain backward compatibility.
Member since:2005-07-07
I suspect that we would see an out of tree port first, followed by individual ZFS features making there way into the appropriate layers of the Linux kernel.
You might want to check this out:
http://zfs-on-fuse.blogspot.com/
Member since:2005-07-06
As I see it it really doesn't matter if Linux gets ZFS or not, most of the features are allready available from lvm, even though I must give Sun that ZFS is easier to manage. Anyway, most of us can't afford the huge amount of disk that ZFS supports.
To Mac users on the other hand, ZFS will be a large step forward, as far as I know current MacOS filesystem can't do things like snapshots. Something I really would like to have to create verifyable backups.
Member since:2005-07-24
Yeah, LVM + RAID5 gets you a lot of it. But management is a bit of a pain. And it does not get you raidz or the the self-checking/self-healing features.
Personally, I feel very comfortable with ext3 and feel that it is a much maligned and underrated filesystem. (Current ext3 is actually quite fast, but nobody knows it.) ;-)
But it's not ZFS. There is no reason, however, that features could not be added to the Linux RAID and VFS layers + ext4 to close the gap.
Edited 2006-12-16 20:43
Member since:2006-06-26
When one takes a close look at zfs - beyong SUN's marketing machine - it's easy to see that it's not totally new. It takes certain features, combines them (that's the actual achievement of zfs), and sells them as zfs. It's not vital for Linux to have this since lvm and xfs achieve roughly the same.
Member since:2005-07-24
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It's not vital for Linux to have this since lvm and xfs achieve roughly the same.
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RAID-Z? Error detection? Self-healing?
And arguments that LVM/RAID/XFS is comparable would be more convincing if we had decent all-in-one management interfaces. And if XFS had ZFS's (or ext3's) resilience in the face of abnormal shutdowns.
Linux is my OS of choice. But I'm not blind to where Sun's ZFS shines. If we had it in Linux we'd be trumpeting the fact from here to Alpha Centauri.
So let's be good sports and not downplay Sun's accomplishments here.
Edited 2006-12-17 21:51
Member since:
2005-07-24
Congratulations, Mac fans. I'm a Linux user, but recognize that ZFS is a filesystem second to none.
If Sun goes GPL on Solaris, which seems likely to happen, we might get a shot at this, too. (GPL is nice and all, but sometimes its unintended consequences are a damned pain.)
Whether ZFS would ever make it into the mainline kernel is another matter. Andrew Moton has described it as a "rampant layering violation", though I should hasten to add that his statement was actually praising ZFS's feature set while noting this fundamental clash with Linux kernel policies.
I suspect that we would see an out of tree port first, followed by individual ZFS features making there way into the appropriate layers of the Linux kernel.
At any rate, looks like you guys are getting there ahead of us. Kudos!
-Steve Bergman