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Zfs

deboni

deboni

macrumors member
Original poster
What ever happened to ZFS, the high-efficiency file system that was being talked about as part of Leopard? I haven't heard anything about it for a while, now. Anyone out there know anything interesting?

Tom
 
I believe it went the same way as WinFS, into the "good idea but expensive to implement" pile.
 
Is the specification on Apple's website that Leopard Server has read-only ZFS support not accurate? My understanding was that this was the work in progress with more support in future versions of OS X.
 
mkrishnan said:
Is the specification on Apple's website that Leopard Server has read-only ZFS support not accurate? My understanding was that this was the work in progress with more support in future versions of OS X.
Click to expand...

i believe this is correct, although i haven't tried it myself. i believe they are taking small steps in moving toward ZFS, as its such an overhaul and expensive. be nice if they had added write too for a bit further testing than just read only.
 
The filesystem is probably the last place on Earth you want Apple to go off half-cocked! Apple's progress seems fairly reasonable to me, compared to the time frame on which these kinds of features will be vital at the server and/or desktop levels.
 
mkrishnan said:
The filesystem is probably the last place on Earth you want Apple to go off half-cocked! Apple's progress seems fairly reasonable to me, compared to the time frame on which these kinds of features will be vital at the server and/or desktop levels.
Click to expand...

of course. i'm not saying we should be able to install on it or anything such as that. but i'd be nice to be able to play around with it a bit more as a system and the potential it has
 
The link above shows the current progress. I'm pretty glad Apple did not rush inclusion. The filesystem is absolutely essential and any bugs can be crippling. Better to wait than lose all your data wouldn't you say?
 
Cromulent said:
The link above shows the current progress. I'm pretty glad Apple did not rush inclusion. The filesystem is absolutely essential and any bugs can be crippling. Better to wait than lose all your data wouldn't you say?
Click to expand...

yeah i agree, though i do look forward to ZFS
 
Zfs

I agree to caution, and also that Apple should get a return on its investment. I'd rather see ZFS as an ADDITIONAL file system than a REPLACEMENT. And doesn't Sun have it fully implemented? I really thought we'd see it available for use by now. It seemed a natural addition to OS X, especially given Apple's Time Machine backup application.

From what I know about it (very little), it's an intriguingly flexible system, and would make such things as volume partitioning and joining, RAIDing, backup-restore capability, and file sharing much more practical and economical. Plus, it should be faster than other file systems, if I understand correctly, and the speed of storage is perhaps the most important aspect of speeding up a system. Perceived speed = GUI speed = File System speed.

That's why I'm interested.

T
 
deboni said:
I agree to caution, and also that Apple should get a return on its investment. I'd rather see ZFS as an ADDITIONAL file system than a REPLACEMENT. And doesn't Sun have it fully implemented? I really thought we'd see it available for use by now. It seemed a natural addition to OS X, especially given Apple's Time Machine backup application.
Click to expand...

Solaris has a different kernel. File systems are not like an application, you can't just compile it and it will magically work. They are an extremely low level part of the operating system, therefore the fact that Solaris has it is rather a moot point.

Although I agree with you. Mac OS X and ZFS do seem to be a very good pairing. I'm as keen as the next man just cautious that my data does not get lost 🙂.
 
mkrishnan said:
The filesystem is probably the last place on Earth you want Apple to go off half-cocked! Apple's progress seems fairly reasonable to me, compared to the time frame on which these kinds of features will be vital at the server and/or desktop levels.
Click to expand...

As of last year, ZFS was not even finalized, thus there was no way was going to be incorporated when Leopard was released.

There are still issues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS

I would like resolution independence, but that's probably harder to implement than it sounds...
 
deboni said:
I agree to caution, and also that Apple should get a return on its investment. I'd rather see ZFS as an ADDITIONAL file system than a REPLACEMENT. And doesn't Sun have it fully implemented? I really thought we'd see it available for use by now. It seemed a natural addition to OS X, especially given Apple's Time Machine backup application.

From what I know about it (very little), it's an intriguingly flexible system, and would make such things as volume partitioning and joining, RAIDing, backup-restore capability, and file sharing much more practical and economical. Plus, it should be faster than other file systems, if I understand correctly, and the speed of storage is perhaps the most important aspect of speeding up a system. Perceived speed = GUI speed = File System speed.

That's why I'm interested.

T
Click to expand...
The big reason preventing full adoption of ZFS by Apple is lack of ZFS boot support. If that was finished (which it may very well be by now), Apple would put it into Mac OS X 10.6 (or Mac OS 11, should Apple take that route).
 
wrldwzrd89 said:
The big reason preventing full adoption of ZFS by Apple is lack of ZFS boot support. If that was finished (which it may very well be by now), Apple would put it into Mac OS X 10.6 (or Mac OS 11, should Apple take that route).
Click to expand...

Out of curiosity, what are the challenges associated with porting the booting process to a new format or partitioning scheme? Is it that you have to write very small code in the bootloader that's able to bring the volume up, or is it something else, e.g. that the code has to be low-level?
 
deboni said:
I agree to caution, and also that Apple should get a return on its investment. I'd rather see ZFS as an ADDITIONAL file system than a REPLACEMENT. And doesn't Sun have it fully implemented? I really thought we'd see it available for use by now. It seemed a natural addition to OS X, especially given Apple's Time Machine backup application.

From what I know about it (very little), it's an intriguingly flexible system, and would make such things as volume partitioning and joining, RAIDing, backup-restore capability, and file sharing much more practical and economical. Plus, it should be faster than other file systems, if I understand correctly, and the speed of storage is perhaps the most important aspect of speeding up a system. Perceived speed = GUI speed = File System speed.

That's why I'm interested.

T
Click to expand...

There's an article here that describes someone setting up a Solaris file server using zfs. Just to mess with it I installed the latest zfs on my Mini a couple of months ago and created a pool and filesystem on a thumbdrive. It worked fine both reading and writing in some limited testing, but there are known actions that will crash the system every time, like (if I remember correctly) ejecting the drive in a Finder window.
 
mkrishnan said:
Out of curiosity, what are the challenges associated with porting the booting process to a new format or partitioning scheme? Is it that you have to write very small code in the bootloader that's able to bring the volume up, or is it something else, e.g. that the code has to be low-level?
Click to expand...
Gosh, I wish I knew the details... but I don't. 😱
 
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