ZFS is on Leopard... Sorta.

[MacRumors]

Informationweek followsup on their previous quote that ZFS was not on Leopard. Croll, senior director of Mac OS X Product Marketing, clarifies:

"ZFS is not the default file system for Leopard. We are exploring it as a file system option for high-end storage systems with really large storage. As a result, we have included ZFS -- a read-only copy of ZFS -- in Leopard."

This means that Leopard will be able to read ZFS volumes... assuming there was a way to create one on Mac OS X, which there isn't... yet.

[Mac-Addict]

Oh shame.. Its good to see Apple give you the choice though.

[xUKHCx]

Well hopefully they will get it sorted, always good to have the latest and greatest.

If it were available as a boot option but not default I would probably use it.

[lamina]

So ZFS on Leopard will be like NTFS on Tiger? Tight.

[chem]

Read-only? Lame. Weaksauce.

[kalisphoenix]

So much for Time Machine being incredible. Now it's just "really nifty."

[AlBDamned]

Originally Posted by Macrumors

This means that Leopard will be able to read ZFS volumes... assuming there was a way to create one on Mac OS X, which there isn't... yet.

Without being a developer I can't tell you if this is correct or not, but the first comment on the original article indicates that the Leopard Developer Beta allows you to create ZFS volumes via Disk Utility...

[dartzorichalcos]

I really wanted ZFS to replace HFS+ completely in Leopard.

[arn]

Originally Posted by AlBDamned

Without being a developer I can't tell you if this is correct or not, but the first comment on the original article indicates that the Leopard Developer Beta allows you to create ZFS volumes via Disk Utility...

hmm.... I guess before we go through this again.

I'll move it to page two, until we hear otherwise.

arn

[loveturtle]

Okay two things.
1) everyone who has thought time machine would use zfs does not understand how zfs works. I'll never understand why people who don't know what they're talking about like to pretend they do on the internet..there's plenty of things i don't know..i don't pretend to know any of them..

Time machine uses a second disk (or, an additional storage device). this is not how zfs snapshots work. zfs snapshots are created by not freeing the old data when modified data is written, that is all.

2) i am going to cry and cut myself if we're really stuck with a read only version of zfs...
btw, in the developer previews (9a410 was the only one i tried this in) you can easily create zfs volumes with the zpool command line utility. so does this mean they're going to gimp it? that makes me sad... i use zfs at work and i was really excited to have zfs on osx...

I can only hope that this isn't accurate...and i can at least have a fully functional zfs implementation via the command line. which is all i ask...

[jawzzy]

Can someone explain what is/what the advantages to ZFS are? The Wikipedia article is a bit too confusing for me.

Thanks in advance!

[trainguy77]

I was really looking forward to ZFS.

[shen]

Originally Posted by kalisphoenix

So much for Time Machine being incredible. Now it's just "really nifty."

your kidding, right?

i mean ZFS is cool and all, and i suspect it will one day be the system of choice on the Mac, but you have very little details available on time machine, and somehow, that is enough to magically tell you that the file system will transform it into a great app?!?

read your tag line, and get back to us when the drugs wear off.....

[speakerwizard]

Originally Posted by dartzorichalcos

I really wanted ZFS to replace HFS+ completely in Leopard.

Its not ready to be a boot drive file system on a mainstream os yet, as far as im aware sun do not even use it as boot drive fire system yet, its cool, but not yet mature, maybe in 10.5.x? lets hope so, maybe for raid at 1st or even server osx

[dartzorichalcos]

Originally Posted by speakerwizard

lets hope so, maybe for raid at 1st or even server osx

Yes, Apple should at least make ZFS for Leopard Server.

[ChrisA]

Originally Posted by jawzzy

Can someone explain what is/what the advantages to ZFS are? The Wikipedia article is a bit too confusing for me.

Thanks in advance!

ZFS puts a "volume manager", RAID and a file system all under the same "roof" so to speak. Itcombines all those layers. It also does it in such a way that (given the right hardware) yo have about zero chance of ever loosing data or filling up a file system. And it scales. It will run on very, very large systems (racks or disks) and will take advantage of adding more hardware to increase performance.

For example if you have a 16-core machine with 64 disk drives ZFS would be MUCH faster then on a more common machine. Whiile it is not clear that HFS+ would gain much if you used 16-cores and many drives.

[lamina]

Originally Posted by jawzzy

Can someone explain what is/what the advantages to ZFS are? The Wikipedia article is a bit too confusing for me.

Thanks in advance!

ZFS supports file sizes of up to 16 exabytes (16 petabytes, or 16 thousand terabytes, or 16,000,000 gigabytes). It supports variable block sizing (imagine city blocks were set to only one size. Think of all the spots where you wouldn't be able to fit a.. say 200 ft by 200 ft lot because you only have 150 by 100 in one spot). ZFS allows for variable sizes, and therefore more efficient use of the disk (less fragmentation). It also has checksumming built in, meaning it can detect and recover corrupted data on the fly...

That's just some of what I got from the wikipedia article.

Simply, ZFS is the file system to end all file systems. Its limitations will likely never be reached (I'm sure I'll be eating those words some day when I'm 6 feet under)

Anyone please correct me if I'm wrong about any of this.

[ChrisA]

Originally Posted by chem

Read-only? Lame. Weaksauce.

Maybe they not been able to get writing to work on Mac OSX. I'll bet that Apple has been testing their ZFS read software using files written by Solaris. I'd also bet Apple has Solaris running on the Mac Pro and on Xserve. Talk about a neat product. They could sell Solaris based storage products today. Apple's prices are very competitive in that market.

[shamino]

Originally Posted by jawzzy

Can someone explain what is/what the advantages to ZFS are?

For a single computer with a single hard drive, there aren't a lot of advantages.

It shines when you are running a large file server. You can gang together lots of hard drives and ZFS will make them appear as one large volume, hopefully without all the ugly management you have to do to set up a RAID file system. You can also add more disks to the existing file system without blowing it away (with RAID, you generally have to do a backup/destroy/create/restore to increase the capacity of an array.)

The other key features mentioned by the Wikipedia article (copy-on-write semantics and snapshots) are useful to any user, but the benefits can be accomplished through other means as well, including the use of journaling and an automatic backup system (like Time Machine.)

I predict that ZFS will become really big for people using XServe RAID and other large-capacity drive arrays. I don't see much point to using it on a computer that has only one hard drive.

Originally Posted by ChrisA

Maybe they not been able to get writing to work on Mac OSX. I'll bet that Apple has been testing their ZFS read software using files written by Solaris. I'd also bet Apple has Solaris running on the Mac Pro and on Xserve. Talk about a neat product. They could sell Solaris based storage products today. Apple's prices are very competitive in that market.

That's quite a leap of logic, there.

They may also simply be attaching ZFS volumes formatted on Solaris via SCSI, FireWire or FibreChannel. What makes you think they have to actually run Solaris on the Mac to make this work?

[AgingGeek]

I'm really glad I don't have the world wide peanut gallery scrutinizing every decision I make in *my* software...

[MacVault]

Now... #1) Why can't Information Week / Bill Croll get their story stright??? And #2) WHY THE $#%@ would anyone - especially the enterprise - want a half-assed-read-only implementation of ZFS? Reminds me of Mac OS X's read-only NTFS support, but at least that is Microsoft's fault.

WTF?

[Hopstretch]

Agreed. Apple's inability to get their ducks in a row on this one is almost enough to drive an otherwise-reasonable observer into the tinfoil hat schwartz-pissed-off-steve-so-much-they-yanked-it-at-the-eleventh-hour camp.

[trainguy77]

Originally Posted by shamino

(with RAID, you generally have to do a backup/destroy/create/restore to increase the capacity of an array.)
.

Well if you have decent hardware controllers you can add disks.

[ChrisA]

Originally Posted by shamino

That's quite a leap of logic, there.

They may also simply be attaching ZFS volumes formatted on Solaris via SCSI, FireWire or FibreChannel. What makes you think they have to actually run Solaris on the Mac to make this work?

I went through this logic and I'd bet any of the working level engineers are Apple would do the same.

"I need a Solaris system. Let's see how can I get one? (A) fill out a zillion forms get three levels of management approval and walk it down to purchasing and wait.... or (B) Download Solaris from Sun's web site, burn the ISO image to DVD and install it on the machine that is already on my desk."

I went route "B" and had a Solaris system running on my dual xeon powered HP computer in only a few hours. That said. I'd bet they have SPARCs someplace at Apple. I'm prety sure Solaris will run inside VMware on a Mac. Solaris likely works under Bot camp too. I don't see any hardware on the ac Pro that Solaris does not support. It's all pretty genaric

[theBB]

Originally Posted by MacVault

Now... #1) Why can't Information Week / Bill Croll get their story stright??? And #2) WHY THE $#%@ would anyone - especially the enterprise - want a half-assed-read-only implementation of ZFS? Reminds me of Mac OS X's read-only NTFS support, but at least that is Microsoft's fault.

WTF?

OK, we got it, you are outraged that ZFS is not fully supported in Leopard. How many times do you have to sprinkle your F-word replacement characters all over this forum? In every thread about this issue, it is the same story. Maybe it is not stable enough yet, maybe it is not much use unless you are using Leopard server, who knows. All I know is that about 95% of the desktop or laptop users in this forum would not even know ZFS existed if not for the rumors and I am tired of your crude ranting. Just because you are not writing the whole word does not make it any more socially acceptable.

Take a pill...