The latest blog entry from Steven Sinofsky about Windows 8 describes the Storage Spaces functionality . From the blog entry it seems Windows 8 is getting something ZFS-like. The Storage Spaces can be created in the command line via Powershell, or in the Control Panel for the ones that prefer a more mouse-friendly interface.
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Member since:2011-01-28
static666,
"The more important feature of thin provisioning is that pool space is allocated on the fly to the individual volume requesting it."
To be honest I'm not sure what benefits the "thin provisioning" has to offer over logical volumes.
Certain file systems can already be dynamically expanded as needed without overcommitting them in the first place. The existing data + structures can be used as is within an ever larger volume. This way, no fs re-formatting is needed, just appending more space to the end (LVM is perfect for this).
Unless there is a limitation of the NTFS at play, I'm uncertain why microsoft would chose the overcommitment implementation described since it offers no discernible advantage over a file system that can grow dynamically over it's lifetime.
Another question: Can the pool's size limit ever be changed or is it a hard limit until the whole pool is reformatted?
"It certainly won't panic. Ever tried to add a swap file with holes in Linux? It simply won't allow this. You have to allocate every 0 of it to a real storage."
I wasn't really talking about swap, linux routinely overcommits memory, but the scenario here is a bit different with disk space.
What happens when overcommitted disk resources run out? Windows ought to return an error, but sometimes, as with memory mapped files, that can be tricky to handle. I don't really know what windows does then.
Edited 2012-01-11 08:45 UTC
The third and final WWDC product I want to talk about is - of course - OS X 10.9 Mavericks. While iOS 7 was clearly the focus of this year's WWDC, its venerable desktop counterpart certainly wasn't left behind. Apple announced OS X 10.9 Mavericks, the first OS X release not to carry the name of a big cat.
We already talked about iOS 7 yesterday (after a night of sleep, it's only looking worse and worse - look at this, for Fiona's sake!), so now it's time to talk about the downright stunning and belly flutters-inducing new Mac Pro. As former owner and huge, huge, huge fan of the PowerMac G4 Cube - I haven't been this excited about an Apple product since, well, I would say the iMac G4. This is the Apple I used to love.
Apple held its big keynote event thing at WWDC earlier this evening, but since I was away with friends I've had to read up on it later in the evening. The company announced iOS 7, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and they gave a preview of the new Mac Pro. Especially the Mac Pro impressed me, and while iOS 7's new Holo/Metro-inspired theme looks messy and garish to me, I do commend Apple for finally breaking the mold. This news item will focus on iOS 7 - I'll dive into the Mac Pro and OS X 10.9 tomorrow (it's late here now).
And yes, the PRISM scandal is far, far from over. More and more information keeps leaking out, and the more gets out, the worse it gets. The companies involved have sent out official statements - often by mouth of their CEOs - and what's interesting is that not only are these official statements eerily similar to each other, using the same terms clearly designed by lawyers, they also directly contradict new reports from The New York Times. So, who is lying?This story is getting bigger and bigger. Even though most Americans probably already knew, it is now official: the United States government, through its National Security Agency, is collecting the communications and data of all American citizens, and of non-Americans using American services, through a wide collaboration with the large companies in technology, like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on. Interestingly enough, the NSA itself, as well as the US government, have repeatedly and firmly denied this massive spying on Americans and non-Americans took place at all.Ah, patents - the never-ending scourge of the technology industry. Whether wielded by companies who don't actually make any products, or large corporations who abuse them because they can't compete in the market place or because they're simply jerks, they do the industry a huge disservice and are simply plain dangerous. According to The Wall Street Journal (circumvention link), president Obama is about to take several executive actions to address patent trolls - which may seem like a good idea, but I am very worried that all this will do is strengthen the positions of notorious patent system abusers such as Apple and Microsoft.
With version 13.05, the developers of the Genode OS Framework take measures to ensure that Genode continues to scale well with a growing number of users and the steadily broadening platform coverage. Further highlights are the improved SoC support for Exynos 5, OMAP4, Raspberry Pi, i.MX, and new components for realizing headless systems.At the D11 conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook once again took the stage to be interviewed by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. While most of the interview can be replicated by picking and reading 10 random Apple fanblog stories - there were still a number of very interesting things that warrant some closer scrutiny.
So, the Xbox One disaster continues. Microsoft's policy for dealing with the used games market has reportedly leaked - and it's a clear and direct attack to destroy the used games market. Prices for used games will be set at the retail value of a new game, and retailers have to hook into Microsoft's computer systems and comply with Microsoft's terms and conditions.At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!
Member since:
2006-06-09
Well, overcommit is possible but is a pretty niche feature for big old stupid DBs in server environments where you're better announcing a giant data partition and letting it be initialized at once rather than bring it down for maintenance every time to expand it later.
The more important feature of thin provisioning is that pool space is allocated on the fly to the individual volume requesting it.
Basically, on a 1TB drive you're going to have C: D: E: volumes each reporting 1TB available with their free space shared and you wouldn't need to worry about running of space or wasting it on some volumes. But you will still have 1TB in total, of course. And I'm not sure if Windows will be able to reclaim and reallocate unused space.
It certainly won't panic. Ever tried to add a swap file with holes in Linux? It simply won't allow this. You have to allocate every 0 of it to a real storage.