GreenBytes to Offer Free 'Community Edition' of ZEVO ZFS for Mac

[MacRumors]

Earlier this week, we reported that the ZEVO solution for bringing the ZFS file system to the Mac had been acquired by storage appliance company GreenBytes. With ZEVO having been pulled from sale with the transition, the future of ZFS on the Mac has been in question, although GreenBytes indicated at the time that it was still committed to the project.

GreenBytes has now announced that it will be launching a free "Community Edition" of ZEVO on September 15.

We wanted to take a few days to nail down the specifics, but we are happy to announce that beginning on September 15, 2012, GreenBytes will offer the ZEVO Community Edition as a freely downloadable binary!

As we approach the September 15th launch date, we will reveal more details about the functionality in the ZEVO Community Edition -- and you should expect enhancements from the prior commercial version!

Support for the new Community Edition will be handled through discussion forums, with forum members and GreenBytes staff helping users of the free edition there.

Don Brady, the former Apple engineer who worked on ZFS at the company before leaving to develop the project on his own after Apple canceled it, will be providing more information on GreenBytes' plans for ZEVO in upcoming posts on the company's blog.

Article Link: GreenBytes to Offer Free 'Community Edition' of ZEVO ZFS for Mac

 

[Rudy69]

Unless it's bootable it's going to be useless for most people

 

[waloshin]

Unless it's bootable it's going to be useless for most people

Linux can boot Zfs there should be no reason why Mac OSX can't.

 

[Riverrun]

Bootable or not, ZFS would be ideal for storage and backup purposes, I think.

Data protection is a major advantage for any Mac user and having a file system that can protect the integrity of data files can only be a benefit. I will certainly be trying it out.

 

[La Porta]

What is ZFS, and what is the advantage?

 

[Lance-AR]

This is definitely going on the Pegasus. Unfortunately I have no idea where to put the data while I reformat.

 

[atMac]

This is definitely going on the Pegasus. Unfortunately I have no idea where to put the data while I reformat.

I have that same issue. With they came out with a reformatting application that would slowly move data as it formatted, from the old formatted space to the new formatted space as it went.

 

[Mad-B-One]

Bootable or not, ZFS would be ideal for storage and backup purposes, I think.

Data protection is a major advantage for any Mac user and having a file system that can protect the integrity of data files can only be a benefit. I will certainly be trying it out.

Do you mean data access or safety from failing? I had a few HDD fail on me. When they failed, the BIOS could not detect them anymore about 1-2 weeks after start of problems. For me, that meant: Backup ASAP. No way a different file system would help that.
Well, I take that back. I had erronious sectors once. That was on one of my 20MB HDD on my Tandon 286 with "Turbo" 10MHz, so it was FAT16. Nowadays, my cache is bigger than both of them: WD Black Caviar 1TB (WD1003FBYX) has, 64MB cache.

Now, that might be different on SSD. I plan on a Vertex 4 256GB soon, so maybe I have to look into this. Question is: Does Windows 8 support this FS? I don't care about booting too much (even though that might be planned later on) but rather use it for video streaming and recompressing and editing.

 

[Riverrun]

Just wondering if one would need to download Developers Tools in order to compile the Zevo binaries or is there an easier way, I wonder?

 

[Glassed Silver]

Give me native ZFS for Pete's sake!

I feel horrible when I check my disk for errors and it "fixes" something to broken files. (I know it doesn't damage them, bitrot does, but the file size meta data is updated to reflect that painful pity that's not necessary)

What's worse than not having good technology?
Having good technology ready in front of you, but not being given to you.

I think "community support" is just way to edgy for me, give me full support backed by the biggest tech company in the world.
I'm not asking for super high transfer speeds, heck, I even acknowledged that with the prices going for Thunderbolt hardware, it renders my Thunderbolt ports useless.
I can live with that, but I'm not asking for something that should be luxury.
I'm asking for file integrity, should be in the top 10 list of things that go without saying for "the world's most advanced desktop OS".

Glassed Silver:mac

 

[milo]

Do you mean data access or safety from failing? I had a few HDD fail on me. When they failed, the BIOS could not detect them anymore about 1-2 weeks after start of problems. For me, that meant: Backup ASAP. No way a different file system would help that.
Well, I take that back. I had erronious sectors once.

File system isn't going to help with complete drive failures, ZFS helps with corrupted bits. It has some checksumming features that can detect and correct (at least in some cases) bad data. The problem with HFS is if bits go bad you won't know about it until the system tries to read and copy them and fails. In the case of data files, if the corrupted data can be read and copied, it will just back up the bad data, which is useless.

Like others have said, Apple just needs to adopt ZFS (or at least create their own equivalent version of it).

And I disagree that it's useless if it can't be booted, in my case the data I care most about is on secondary drives anyway.

 

[Mad-B-One]

And I disagree that it's useless if it can't be booted, in my case the data I care most about is on secondary drives anyway.

Well, what I meant is that the logic board of the HDD failed - in this case the IDE controller or some other logic - not the FS. When I tried to copy the data, I was able to copy them for a certain amount of time until the HDD said "goodbye" for good. I could not even see that something was connected in the BIOS. Everything I copied was fine though. No corrupt files (except the last one, but I guess that just wasn't 100% of the file). Now, that was only private data. No need to send it to a forensic team and waste $10k for a recovery. In my experience, consumer HDD - the ones I use - do not fail on a corruption level, rahter the cheap controllers will give in first. The 2 20MB HDD I had back then predated IDE and were industrial grade. But the thing is, they failed way after it was relevant. The 286 was already over a decade old. When I booted it, I had to hit the case with a thump so the HDD start spinning

 

[milo]

In my experience, consumer HDD - the ones I use - do not fail on a corruption level, rahter the cheap controllers will give in first.

The only way you'd know that is if you had checksummed every one of your files.

That's the whole point - with HFS you can copy files from a disk, and unless they are completely unreadable, corrupt files will copy just the same as pristine ones, without the user having any idea they are corrupted.

 

[Mad-B-One]

The only way you'd know that is if you had checksummed every one of your files.

That's the whole point - with HFS you can copy files from a disk, and unless they are completely unreadable, corrupt files will copy just the same as pristine ones, without the user having any idea they are corrupted.

So, to run this save with Windows, I would need Windows 2012 Server with ReFS. That on the other hand does not support booting from it and a lot of other things NTFS provided. Crappers.

 

[Makosuke]

ZFS provides some cool stuff in single-drive configurations that I'm interested in for my home server's data volume (for which I could care less if it's bootable, so long as Spotlight can index it, which was a weakness in past Mac ZFS implementations). I'm most interested in RAID-Z, though--it's essentially a pure-software implementation of a similar RAID system to what Drobo uses in their boxes, or a much more advanced RAID-5/6-like system.

If it works as well as the proponents claim it does, it's nearly ideal for a moderate-sized multi-drive home/small business server, where you could RAID-Z, say, 4-6 external drives together into one big 10TB pool of disks with 1-2 drives of redundancy and auto-versioning backups. You'd still want a secondary backup copy of anything truly important, of course, but it would offer a degree of data protection from hardware failure and software corruption you don't really get (again, in theory) from just a hardware RAID5 implementation.

I've had my eye on the announced-but-never-shipped Ten's Complement RAID-Z tier for a while, so now I'm wondering if this new free version will include that as a feature, or if they're dropping it entirely. I can't say I'm optimistic, but who knows.

 

[Riot Nrrrd]

Among my many hats at work, I'm a Solaris administrator.

All of my Solaris 10 systems now use ZFS. Even if they only have a single drive. (Most of them have dual identical zpool mirrored drives, admittedly.)

It's such a ridiculously great (and mature, at this point) technology that the fact that Apple and the various Linux distros don't have it as their default FS is an absolute travesty.

(Yes, I know there's probably technical, political and monetary reasons why that isn't the case. I still stand by my sentiment.)

Seeing that ZEVO has fallen by the wayside (being bought out is tantamount to that IMHO) is a disappointment. I has a sad.

 

[Riot Nrrrd]

If it works as well as the proponents claim it does, it's nearly ideal for a moderate-sized multi-drive home/small business server, where you could RAID-Z, say, 4-6 external drives together into one big 10TB pool of disks with 1-2 drives of redundancy and auto-versioning backups. You'd still want a secondary backup copy of anything truly important, of course, but it would offer a degree of data protection from hardware failure and software corruption you don't really get (again, in theory) from just a hardware RAID5 implementation.

I've got a Pegasus R6 12TB Thunderbolt RAID box sitting here rotting in my on-deck circle (don't have any Thunderbold-equipped Mac yet ... ) that I would love to be able to make a ZFS zpool out of. Sigh ...

 

[smuckola]

http://maczfs.org/

Start your CDDL source code requests. We're hoping that they're going to actually collaborate with us!

Or get the already-free ZFS for Mac OS, with source code, since.... hmm... I don't remember how many years.

http://maczfs.org/

 

[Makosuke]

Or get the already-free ZFS for Mac OS, with source code, since.... hmm... I don't remember how many years.

I at least hadn't forgotten about the existing open source project, and had considered testing it out, but I confess to being a little uncomfortable--for no particularly good reason--about trusting disk management tasks to command line utilities, even if it works perfectly.

Mainly, though, the lack of Spotlight support is a complete deal-breaker for the way I work. I wonder if the no-longer-Tens-Complement guy will be able to get that worked out?

 

[Gelfin]

Unless it's bootable it's going to be useless for most people

Really? I've been lamenting for some time now that storage has finally become nearly cheap enough to consider rolling my DVDs into a video jukebox and putting the discs into storage. Thunderbolt provides the interface, and external disks are getting cheap. I'm even dreaming up the Rails-based UI I'll use to control the beast.

All I need now is a filesystem that provides reasonable failure protection and a single logical volume atop a hot-expandable drive pool. I don't actually care much about my boot volume. Even loaded to bursting with software, once media is offloaded that's trivial to back up.

 

[MikhailT]

Give me native ZFS for Pete's sake!
….

I think "community support" is just way to edgy for me, give me full support backed by the biggest tech company in the world.
…..

Apple's probably going to work on their own alternative FS to ZFS. They're not going to put up with the possible licensing issues with Oracle's ZFS and the CDDL that they don't want to use with the open-source community.

 

[TheJae]

Give me native ZFS for Pete's sake!

 

[IPlayFair]

I am new to the Apple environment. In reading the how to article, it suggests one can install Mountain Lion on multiple machines. Isn't there a license requirement? I know with Windows, at least the old system, the purchaser is licensed to install the software on two machines.

 

[justperry]

Start your CDDL source code requests. We're hoping that they're going to actually collaborate with us!

Or get the already-free ZFS for Mac OS, with source code, since.... hmm... I don't remember how many years.

http://maczfs.org/

As long as they don't fix the System crash when you pull the cord of an external drive it's not a viable solution.
Maybe that was one of the reasons Apple dumped ZFS.
I tried MacZFS a year or so ago, but as soon as I found out that it will crash the system when you unmount a drive without removing the disk from the pool I trashed it.

I am new to the Apple environment. In reading the how to article, it suggests one can install Mountain Lion on multiple machines. Isn't there a license requirement? I know with Windows, at least the old system, the purchaser is licensed to install the software on two machines.

Wrong thread!

 

[RedTomato]

I've been looking into these RAID alternatives, and for the moment, I've plumped for UnRaid. I'm building an UnRaid box out of an old PC. The array is up, but I may still hit a showstopper as I try to bring it into working use.

What I like about UnRaid, which I'm not sure if ZFS provides:

- on-the-fly addition of new disks (this was a PITA with my old RAID5 system)
- each individual disk can be put into a separate computer and the complete files read off that disk
- A file read only spins up the specific disk that holds the file needed. A write only spins up the disk written plus the parity disk. (does ZFS keep all the disks spinning all the time?)
- more userfriendly than FreeNas