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Apple to adopt ZFS as default file system for Leopard

post #1 of 157
6/6/07 at 10:29am
Thread Starter 
Just found on www.macrumors.com

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Perhaps overcome with excitement (and forgetting that Apple doesn't like such pre-emptive disclosures), Sun's Jonathan Schwartz announced today at Sun event in Washington D.C. that Apple would be making ZFS "the file system" in Mac OS 10.5 Leopard (video link, requires RealPlayer).

In fact, this week you'll see that Apple is announcing at their Worldwide Developer Conference that ZFS has become the file system in Mac OS 10.
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Link To Vid: silly ass long link

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post #2 of 157
6/6/07 at 10:34am
If true, this is great news!

Apple must have piled on the engineers to sort out a boot solution.
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post #3 of 157
6/6/07 at 10:41am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by audiopollution View Post

If true, this is great news!

Apple must have piled on the engineers to sort out a boot solution.

Indeed... Funny I just downloaded realplayer to watch the clip and it's not showing any keynote instead some odd instructional video on taking video or photos...

Odd...

D
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post #4 of 157
6/6/07 at 11:12am
Quote:
Originally Posted by DaveGee View Post

Indeed... Funny I just downloaded realplayer to watch the clip and it's not showing any keynote instead some odd instructional video on taking video or photos...

Odd...

D

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post #5 of 157
6/6/07 at 11:44am
It may have been a premeditated outburst or a sudden slip-of-the-lip, but either way Sun Microsystems chief executive Jonathan Schwartz is claiming that Apple next week will announce a plan to replace the default Mac OS X file system with the Sun-developed ZFS.

Schwartz made the plans public while speaking to analysts and members of the media at a company event in nation's capital on Wednesday. The event was primarily aimed at hyping a more flexible array of blade servers.

"In fact, this week you'll see that Apple is announcing at their Worldwide Developer Conference that ZFS has become the file system in Mac OS 10," he said while speaking of his firm's file system (Real Player video link).

Originally conceived by Sun as a foundation for its Solaris operating system, ZFS features high capacity, a novel on-disk structure, lightweight instances, and the integration of the concepts for volume management.

Unlike a traditional file system, which resides on a single device and thus requires a volume manager to use more than one device, ZFS is built on top of virtual storage pools called zpools. A pool is constructed from virtual devices, each of which is either a raw device, a mirror of one or more devices, or a RAID-Z group of two or more devices.

ZFS would replace Apple's current default file system, Journaled HFS+, beginning with October's release of Leopard, according to Schwartz' comments.
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post #6 of 157
6/6/07 at 11:51am
Hmm. What are the implications of this. Will files be compatible with previous versions of Mac OS X. Will there be a choice as there is now when you format. What benefits does this bring.
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post #7 of 157
6/6/07 at 11:54am
I've heared ZFS is great, so it looks great. They'll probably include ZFS support in 10.4.10 once they've actually announced this themselves, and hopefully it'll be backwards compatible in some ways... we hope.

If it isn't going to be compatible, then it'll suck. Otherwise, all is well, no?

-tj
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post #8 of 157
6/6/07 at 12:14pm
why release new hardware (MB/MBPs) and render their systems incompatible only days/months later?
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post #9 of 157
6/6/07 at 12:18pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by shiato storm View Post

why release new hardware (MB/MBPs) and render their systems incompatible only days/months later?

Nearly 5 months till the announced Leopard release, so that's a reasonable stretch till the next revision, and given recent history that revision could easily be a major one.

It makes sense to do basic "keeping up with the Joneses" CPU/graphics card/HDD until then, and might explain why there hasn't been anything more substantial for a while.
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post #10 of 157
6/6/07 at 12:18pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by shiato storm View Post

why release new hardware (MB/MBPs) and render their systems incompatible only days/months later?

Yes, of course, they should just stop developing anything new!

Also, how does this render the new systems incompatible? It's a filesystem.
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post #11 of 157
6/6/07 at 12:20pm
Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet

That likely means that Time Machine is going to be based on ZFS snapshots rather than Journaled HFS+

Sun's Schwartz made a boo boo by spilling the beans but ZFS isn't going to be a Top Secret Leopard feature. It's already known that ZFS support was in the betas albeit non bootable.
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post #12 of 157
6/6/07 at 12:20pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by audiopollution View Post

If true, this is great news!

Apple must have piled on the engineers to sort out a boot solution.

This makes sense. That must be why there hasn't been much news about ZFS development lately. It was pulled under Apple's iron curtain where the boot problem and other bugs are hopefully being fixed. Maybe Apple decided to let Sun have the thunder on this one by announcing it before them (since it is their tech and all and Apple should have plenty to announce for themselves).
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post #13 of 157
6/6/07 at 12:24pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by hmurchison View Post

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet

That likely means that Time Machine is going to be based on ZFS snapshots rather than Journaled HFS+

Sun's Schwartz made a boo boo by spilling the beans but ZFS isn't going to be a Top Secret Leopard feature. It's already known that ZFS support was in the betas albeit non bootable.

I don't think Time Machine is based on ZFS, though it will certainly work WITH ZFS if you use ZFS. Hasn't Time Machine been in the betas so far, working HFS+?

I don't think people will have to move to ZFS, but it's VERY nice to have the capability! The speed and reliability benefits sound huge.

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post #14 of 157
6/6/07 at 12:27pm
Thread Starter 
Rethinking this... he didn't specifically come out and say ZFS will become the **default** filesystem for OS X 10.5 he said "ZFS will be the filesystem..." and could have very well meant to say "ZFS will be a filesystem for OS X 10.5 ..."

Also as far as time machine using ZFS I wouldn't be too sure... It'll be a safe bet that initially TM will work with HFS+ as well as ZFS and thus might not be taking advantage of specific features of ZFS - at least not right away...

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post #15 of 157
6/6/07 at 12:30pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by hmurchison View Post

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet

That likely means that Time Machine is going to be based on ZFS snapshots rather than Journaled HFS+

I still fail to see in what ways ZFS affects the computing experience in everyday general use.
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post #16 of 157
6/6/07 at 12:35pm
Zi file system!

DaHarder just got banned. Let's crack open the champagne.

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post #17 of 157
6/6/07 at 12:44pm
"I'm gonna kill you, Schwartz!" -Steve Jobs

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post #18 of 157
6/6/07 at 12:56pm
I would think that ZFS would allow you to have a virtual filesystem that crosses physical boundaries of hard drives.

I ran out of space on my main/boot harddrive because of video. With ZFS, I think I should be able to extend the filesystem so that it looks like all my videos are under my own username/home directory but actually are on 2 separate drives.

Any insights on how ZFS might benefit users?
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post #19 of 157
6/6/07 at 12:58pm
Time Machine will definitely work with HFS+, but it requires a second volume to be activated. Besides, it makes a copy of the modified files/sectors, which is slow. ZFS snapshots are not bringing any overhead, it's because of the way the file system works. It can be faster (in some situations - much faster) than HFS even when using a single volume. The trick is clever scheduling of the read/write operations. If you are watching movie, for example, the reading operation will have high priority and there will be no dropouts. For the Mac OS X Server with RAID the performance improvement may be dramatic. It is VERY fast for DB etc. It also has a built-in compression (I guess encryption can be added too), which, unlike some old Windows and mac implementations, further improve the performance on modern CPUs.
ZFS is VERY reliable. Unlike Journaling on HFS+, there is no performance penalty for increased (actually, much better than in HFS+) reliability.
If you make a search, you may find stunning performance results. This is not the best one:
http://www.helios.de/news/news07/zfs.phtml
In many cases you may think this is impossible because it is beyond the hardware limits of the drive speed/interface bandwidth.
Microsoft failed to deliver the promised new file system with Vista. And Apple is going to speak very loudly about ZFS benefits.
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post #20 of 157
6/6/07 at 1:05pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorotea View Post

I would think that ZFS would allow you to have a virtual filesystem that crosses physical boundaries of hard drives.

I ran out of space on my main/boot harddrive because of video. With ZFS, I think I should be able to extend the filesystem so that it looks like all my videos are under my own username/home directory but actually are on 2 separate drives.

Any insights on how ZFS might benefit users?

You are absolutely correct with your assumption. If you want to read more wikipedia is a good place to start.
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post #21 of 157
6/6/07 at 1:07pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorotea View Post

I ran out of space on my main/boot harddrive because of video. With ZFS, I think I should be able to extend the filesystem so that it looks like all my videos are under my own username/home directory but actually are on 2 separate drives.

Exactly, you will be able. This particular feature is not really new for the UNIX world (it was there for ages) but it was never there in Mac OS 9 - X and all flavors of Windows. You should be careful with this however. If you are not using RAID configurations, you should avoid using, for example, 2 filesystems spread around two physical drives each (e.g. for increased performance) if at least one of them could reside on a single drive. You will be in trouble if one of the drives fails, or if you decide to remove it.

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post #22 of 157
6/6/07 at 1:07pm
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I think there's no question that ZFS will be a huge win for servers, and I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up being the default in MacOS X Server, or at least a strongly recommended option. I will be surprised, however, if it shows up as the default in MacOS X client. Pleasantly surprised, but still surprised.
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post #23 of 157
6/6/07 at 1:23pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kickaha View Post

I think there's no question that ZFS will be a huge win for servers, and I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up being the default in MacOS X Server, or at least a strongly recommended option. I will be surprised, however, if it shows up as the default in MacOS X client. Pleasantly surprised, but still surprised.

I will be surprised too, but this will make Time Machine actually usable
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post #24 of 157
6/6/07 at 1:29pm
If iPhone is based on Leopard, could the iPhone OS be running on ZFS?

Also will ZFS make things faster/snappier?
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post #25 of 157
6/6/07 at 1:43pm
Null.
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post #26 of 157
6/6/07 at 1:57pm
I wonder whether Apple will add ZFS support to the iPod? If the main file system becomes ZFS, surely providing this on the iPod would make sense?
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post #27 of 157
6/6/07 at 1:59pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ajmas View Post

I wonder whether Apple will add ZFS support to the iPod? If the main file system becomes ZFS, surely providing this on the iPod would make sense?

I don't see the point of having ZFS as the file system on an iPod. What advantages do you see?
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post #28 of 157
6/6/07 at 2:05pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by audiopollution View Post

I don't see the point of having ZFS as the file system on an iPod. What advantages do you see?

Consistency. Currently the iPod uses HFS+, as does the Mac. On the PC side the iPod uses FAT32 and MS-Windows uses the same. Following on from there I just figured it would make sense to take the iPod in the same direction when upgrade to 10.5.
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post #29 of 157
6/6/07 at 2:11pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpamSandwich View Post

"I'm gonna kill you, Schwartz!" -Steve Jobs

The WWDC DVDs are quickly recalled and ZFS ripped out of Leopard.
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post #30 of 157
6/6/07 at 2:14pm
Not to derail the thread, but I use an external drive with my laptop for video and an aperture vault etc. I usually don't work at my desk which means a lot of plugging and unplugging my drive. Since zfs puts all the drives under one directory how would it respond to a harddrive (twice the size of the latop's for that matter) drifting in and out?

Or will I just have to create a virtual disk which is tied to the external to keep things nice?
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post #31 of 157
6/6/07 at 2:14pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by DHagan4755 View Post

If iPhone is based on Leopard, could the iPhone OS be running on ZFS?

Also will ZFS make things faster/snappier?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I didn't think flash needed a filesystem. RAM certainly doesn't as far as I'm aware.
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post #32 of 157
6/6/07 at 2:16pm
I'm very surprised. I've recently stated on these forums that ZFS can't be the default filesystem because of it's inability to boot. If true, I guess Apple is really working some magic.
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post #33 of 157
6/6/07 at 2:36pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by addabox View Post

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Truly, you understand the power of the Force.


This is great news, Filesystems like ZFS are essential for a future where storage is online, all-the-time.
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post #34 of 157
6/6/07 at 2:48pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lupa View Post

Not to derail the thread, but I use an external drive with my laptop for video and an aperture vault etc. I usually don't work at my desk which means a lot of plugging and unplugging my drive. Since zfs puts all the drives under one directory how would it respond to a harddrive (twice the size of the latop's for that matter) drifting in and out?

Or will I just have to create a virtual disk which is tied to the external to keep things nice?

It doesn't do that automatically. It has the *capability* to do it, but it doesn't just take any disk you pop in and add it to a pool.
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post #35 of 157
6/6/07 at 2:56pm
Yea for ZFS! It sound very cool!
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post #36 of 157
6/6/07 at 2:57pm
Wow,
I this is a really exciting development, I am a bit of a file system junkie and am glad to see apple jumping headfirst into ZFS. It seems a lot of the shortcomings of ZFS (i.e. bootable) have been under development for awhile now and are releasing late this year (coincidence?). Snapshots, data integrity, clean backups, seamless disk volume management, mirroring, striping, I/O priotities, oh my! These technologies have all been developed, tested and used in bits and pieces in the enterprise world for years now. The original Time Machine demo sounded great, but in the Beta releases to date it had been junk, it seemed to be an ugly implementation of a great concept, not very Apple.... It sounds like Apple is doing what they do best, taking complex technology and integrating it seamlessly to simplify the way we deal with computers. PCs have been stagnant using essentially the same storage and filesystem paradigm for decades now. I can't wait to see what wonderful things Apple can do with a modern filesystem like ZFS.
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post #37 of 157
6/6/07 at 3:38pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by hdasmith View Post

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I didn't think flash needed a filesystem. RAM certainly doesn't as far as I'm aware.

It does need a file system. Flash is usually formatted as FAT32 and the bigger 4GB+ cards are often NTFS. It just appears to most OSs as a disk.

Quote:
Originally Posted by audiopollution View Post

I don't see the point of having ZFS as the file system on an iPod. What advantages do you see?

There's one advantage I'd see. Say you've a big networked drive sat on a network using a ZFS pool. How cool would it be to add that pool in to your networked iPod, iPhone or AppleTV and seamlessly have a huge media library to use. Or even viceversa so you no longer have to sync data between two drives.
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post #38 of 157
6/6/07 at 3:42pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorotea View Post

Any insights on how ZFS might benefit users?

ZFS is fully geek/buzzword compliant. An overview from Sun here and here.


1. The basics.

2. Here is a demo for self-healing.

I hope this is true and that Apple uses ZFS for Leopard.
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post #39 of 157
6/6/07 at 3:47pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lupa View Post

Not to derail the thread, but I use an external drive with my laptop for video and an aperture vault etc. I usually don't work at my desk which means a lot of plugging and unplugging my drive. Since zfs puts all the drives under one directory how would it respond to a harddrive (twice the size of the latop's for that matter) drifting in and out?

Or will I just have to create a virtual disk which is tied to the external to keep things nice?

Imagine a user interface that will ask you what to do with an external drive when you connect it to the Mac for the first time. Similar to: 1- "Add the drive?" (the external drive's storage space will be added to the internal Macintosh HD drive); 2- "Keep as external", 3- "Use as mirror"... ); 4- .(..). This is the real reason why Leopard has been delayed till October.
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post #40 of 157
6/6/07 at 3:51pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by DHagan4755 View Post

If iPhone is based on Leopard, could the iPhone OS be running on ZFS?

Also will ZFS make things faster/snappier?

Even if all things were equal; ZFS should provide a performance boost. I like HFS+ but it's carrying a *lot* of legacy code (6800 code emulated into powerPC emulated to x86). I'm only loosely familiar with ZFS but I'm mostly impressed (certainly hard to use up a 128 bit file system and it's capacity to "nest" file systems means it can be both efficient and virtually inexhaustable; in that small files can stay small -- generally, increasing the number of bits for a file system also increases the size of the smallest sector).

I'm more concerned about the user experience; I miss resource forks and metadata. I'm intrigued by ZFSs implimentation of Metadata but haven't explored it enough to know if it's useful. I still think file extensions are a *Bad* idea (the information should be metadata and generated as extensions on the fly only when dealing with more primitive (extension dependent) file systems for backward compatibility) and Aliases are far more useful than symbolic links. I have rather strong and specific ideas on what a filesystem should and shouldn't do (back in the days of SemperFi -- God that's over a decade ago -- I had extensive discussions with Apple engineers about this before HFS got it's "+"); There is nothing intrinsic to ZFS I object to but I would love to see a more user centric implimentation of a "Finder" than we currently have.

K
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