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Apple to adopt ZFS as default file system for Leopard - Page 3

post #81 of 157
6/7/07 at 10:32am
If they want deep enterprise penetration (which they haven't said yet), it would make some sense to at least consider putting a beefier server OS under OS X. Maybe I'm just engaging in some wishful thinking

Quote:
Originally Posted by Slewis View Post

But they have no reason to use Solaris so it still makes no sense, especially with the GPLv3.

Apple maintains their own kernel, a hybrid kernel design using Mach and BSD that does exactly what they need it to do, nothing less and nothing more and have absolutely no reason to switch kernels to a kernel that they don't even maintain themselves, and even if they modify it they still have to republish it in the exact way that the Free Software Foundation wants them to.

Sebastian
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post #82 of 157
6/7/07 at 10:37am
I'm not totally sure about this, but I think Solaris 10 is not GPL. I think it's Sun's own open liscence.

Quote:
Originally Posted by blake.irvin View Post

If they want deep enterprise penetration (which they haven't said yet), it would make some sense to at least consider putting a beefier server OS under OS X. Maybe I'm just engaging in some wishful thinking
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post #83 of 157
6/7/07 at 10:51am
Why would they bother porting ZFS to OS X if they were going to use Open Solaris? I've heard a lot of people mention a kernel switch but would the system even be binary compatible? If not, that idea is right out because we're not going through the whole update process again.

If the performance of 10.5 has improved to the extent we need then we don't need a new kernel as that is the only flaw in the current system. If ZFS offers IO improvements then this helps relieve a bottleneck too.

I agree with what was said about snapshots and Time Machine. It sounds to me like Time Machine was built purposely to take advantage of ZFS. This is the peak of OS X's development and what better way to go about it than to use a future-proof filesystem.

It also means that cross-platform issues are gone. If Solaris uses ZFS and Windows machines have to connect to ZFS-based servers then they'll have to be compatible, which makes Windows machines compatible with Macs and someone said Leopard will have NTFS read/write support so we're set.

Quote:
Originally Posted by BadNameErr

Interesting article (not written by me)...

http://www.bynkii.com/archives/2007/..._file_sys.html

I think the main concerns were that the filesystem is not optimized for a desktop OS but rather a server system but Apple can probably modify it enough to work better on a desktop. ZFS is sure starting to look like that secret feature (if there is only one).

As for CPU being eaten, they said that it uses minimal CPU resources and we have two CPUs anyway so we likely won't notice it happening.

About suboptimal block sizes, that other guy said it uses automatic block sizes, which sounds the most optimal in any situation. It allows you to specify your own block sizes if you want.

Backwards compatibility for ZFS is probably the only thing that concerns me but I'm sure there will be ways round it.

Just like the Intel switch, this may be painful at first but it should be for the better.
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post #84 of 157
6/7/07 at 11:09am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

Why would they bother porting ZFS to OS X if they were going to use Open Solaris? I've heard a lot of people mention a kernel switch but would the system even be binary compatible? If not, that idea is right out because we're not going through the whole update process again.

If the performance of 10.5 has improved to the extent we need then we don't need a new kernel as that is the only flaw in the current system. If ZFS offers IO improvements then this helps relieve a bottleneck too.

I agree with what was said about snapshots and Time Machine. It sounds to me like Time Machine was built purposely to take advantage of ZFS. This is the peak of OS X's development and what better way to go about it than to use a future-proof filesystem.

It also means that cross-platform issues are gone. If Solaris uses ZFS and Windows machines have to connect to ZFS-based servers then they'll have to be compatible, which makes Windows machines compatible with Macs and someone said Leopard will have NTFS read/write support so we're set.



I think the main concerns were that the filesystem is not optimized for a desktop OS but rather a server system but Apple can probably modify it enough to work better on a desktop. ZFS is sure starting to look like that secret feature (if there is only one).

As for CPU being eaten, they said that it uses minimal CPU resources and we have two CPUs anyway so we likely won't notice it happening.

About suboptimal block sizes, that other guy said it uses automatic block sizes, which sounds the most optimal in any situation. It allows you to specify your own block sizes if you want.

Backwards compatibility for ZFS is probably the only thing that concerns me but I'm sure there will be ways round it.

Just like the Intel switch, this may be painful at first but it should be for the better.

While I'm only 50-50 about whether it will be THE new file format, rather than being an option as is the UNIX file format, I don't agree with that article either on several points.

The talk about the Solaris core is because the MACH core is not popular here, or on other sites. People are always looking for ways Apple would get rid of it.

All MACs now have at least two cores. Most tasks don't require two cores. Even when they do, they rarely use most of the power of the cores . That's rare.

Over time, most machines will have four cores. The loss of part of the performance of one will be missed even less. So I doubt that performance will be hit most of the time by this.

As far as backwards compatibility goes, he pointed out that this happened with System 8. I remember it well.

It doesn't support his argument. Rather, it supports the contrary one. That Apple has done that in the past, and could do it again, if they feel the advantages are worth it. It would also help to convince people to upgrade sooner.

I don't buy the block size argument either. Auto block size allocation would seem to eliminate that problem.

And as has been pointed out, Apple will no doubt fine tune the system for their needs. That's no doubt what at least some of those Apple engineers are doing.
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post #85 of 157
6/7/07 at 8:26pm
Calm down, everybody. There won't be any ZFS by default in Leopard.

It is not trivial to implement! None of the builds of Leopard so far had ZFS as default - think about it. It's the exact same argument I used to predict that Leopard would be late - lack of "secret features" in the builds meant that Leopard would be late - since they *must* test them widely with developers before releasing. Exactly the same situation with ZFS - it ain't in the builds as the default file system, and you can't implement and test such a non-trivial feature so close to the release date (October). Ergo, no ZFS in Leopard by default. Period.
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post #86 of 157
6/7/07 at 9:06pm
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post #87 of 157
6/7/07 at 10:35pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by nine9nin View Post

2. Honkin' big filesystems

How big do filesystems need to be? In a world where 640KB is certainly not enough for computer memory, current filesystems have reached or are reaching the end of their usefulness. A 64-bit filesystem would meet today's need, but estimate of the lifetime of a 64-bit filesystem is about 10 years. Extending to 128-bits gives ZFS an expected lifetime of 30 years (UFS, for comparison, is about 20 years old). So how much data can you squeeze into a 128-bit filesystem? 16 exabytes or 18 million terabytes. How many files can you cram into a ZFS filesystem? 200 million million.

Could anyone use a fileystem that large? No, not really. The topic has roused discussions about boiling the oceans if a real life storage unit that size was powered on. It may not be necessary to have 128 bits, but it doesn't hurt and we won't have to worry about running out of addressable space.

Your math is wrong. 2^128 is 16EB^16EB, yes that's an exponent. 64bits only give you 16EB singularly.

How big is that? if you bought 16EB of RAM today it would approximately cost the GNP of the USA last year (~$2.6 Trillion if you want a ballpark figure). Now keep buying that every second for the next 16 BILLION YEARS. Yeah, we would run out of time with this sun, it would explode, a new sun would be born and we wouldn't even be halfway through with buying the RAM.

I highly doubt the human race can create that many files collectively in the next million years, let alone thhe next 30!
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post #88 of 157
6/7/07 at 11:38pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Slewis View Post

Sun has plans to license it under the GPLv3... or was that OpenSolaris? Either way pulling an entire kernel swap would be damn stupid right now, and as I said, Apple is going to do what works for them. What works for them right now is maintaining complete control of their own kernel, XNU, which is not a "server OS" and not even an OS itself, but a Kernel.

Sebastian

http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thre...23699&tstart=0

o GPL* licensing OpenSolaris would be yielding to a small vocal
minority of FOSS developers who use the lack of GPL licensing, purely
as a means of fostering FUD towards OpenSolaris and who will, in all
likelyhood, find some other workable mechanism to continue to foster
FUD towards the project.

Kudos to the OGB. Dang tired of the FSF and GPL v3...

Vinea
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post #89 of 157
6/9/07 at 8:58am
Will this new file system require a new harddrive or new hardware, or would it work with my current (June 2006) MacBook?
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post #90 of 157
6/9/07 at 9:05am
Quote:
Originally Posted by josa92 View Post

Will this new file system require a new harddrive or new hardware, or would it work with my current (June 2006) MacBook?

Nope, not at all.
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post #91 of 157
6/9/07 at 9:13am
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism View Post

Nope, not at all.

ummm.... That was not a yes or no question...
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post #92 of 157
6/9/07 at 9:15am
Quote:
Originally Posted by FineWine View Post

Calm down, everybody. There won't be any ZFS by default in Leopard.

It is not trivial to implement! None of the builds of Leopard so far had ZFS as default - think about it. It's the exact same argument I used to predict that Leopard would be late - lack of "secret features" in the builds meant that Leopard would be late - since they *must* test them widely with developers before releasing. Exactly the same situation with ZFS - it ain't in the builds as the default file system, and you can't implement and test such a non-trivial feature so close to the release date (October). Ergo, no ZFS in Leopard by default. Period.

I agree. There is no evidence that Apple is making ZFS the default filesystem. Except for blake.irvin's post (on page 2 of this thread) I've read absolutely nothing about successfully booting from ZFS.

I do see a lot of potential with ZFS but there is still much to do as far as I can tell. Plus, I expect Apple to implement ZFS in OS X Server first. After all, that is where this change would be the most beneficial.

The earliest we will see this as a default file system will be 10.6.
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post #93 of 157
6/9/07 at 9:18am
Quote:
Originally Posted by meelash View Post

ummm.... That was not a yes or no question...

It was a poorly structured, dichotomous question. I responded to the relevant first part as the latter part was redundant.

"Will this new file system require a new harddrive or new hardware?"
"Nope, not at all."
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post #94 of 157
6/9/07 at 9:32am
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism View Post

I agree. There is no evidence that Apple is making ZFS the default filesystem. Except for blake.irvin's post (on page 2 of this thread) I've read absolutely nothing about successfully booting from ZFS.

I do see a lot of potential with ZFS but there is still much to do as far as I can tell. Plus, I expect Apple to implement ZFS in OS X Server first. After all, that is where this change would be the most beneficial.

The earliest we will see this as a default file system will be 10.6.

I've been wondering if ZFS, and in specific its copy-on-write capabilities, aren't the foundation of Time Machine. However, perhaps for this to happen, ZFS wouldn't necessarily need to be the default FS of the boot partition, but rather the required FS of the external drive, share point, etc.

Just a thought
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post #95 of 157
6/9/07 at 9:46am
Quote:
Originally Posted by 4fx View Post

I've been wondering if ZFS, and in specific its copy-on-write capabilities, aren't the foundation of Time Machine.

What we do know...
  1. Current Leopard builds can't enable ZFS.
  2. Time Machine works on Leopard.

So we can deduce that Time Machine doesn't require ZFS for current Leopard builds. Now, I've read many reports that it's quite buggy. Perhaps the solution was to use ZFS instead of HFS+, but I doubt as it seems ZFS has enough of it's own problems at this time.

I really think ZFS is a long term goal for Apple, and not intended for Leopard.

(speculation on my part)
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post #96 of 157
6/9/07 at 11:01am
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism View Post

but I doubt as it seems ZFS has enough of it's own problems at this time.

I really think ZFS is a long term goal for Apple, and not intended for Leopard.

Yeah it could easily go one way or the other but it's already in Solaris and I doubt Apple will be releasing 10.6 for a while and a filesystem change is even less likely to happen in a point release. So we'd be talking about 2 years maybe before we'd get to see the benefits. It definitely seems like ZFS is a superior file system to HFS+ and I don't think Apple ever like to be the ones playing catch up. The move would likely be more important for their Xserve business than their desktops but both would see benefits.
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post #97 of 157
6/9/07 at 3:48pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism View Post

What we do know...
  1. Current Leopard builds can't enable ZFS.
  2. Time Machine works on Leopard.

So we can deduce that Time Machine doesn't require ZFS for current Leopard builds. Now, I've read many reports that it's quite buggy. Perhaps the solution was to use ZFS instead of HFS+, but I doubt as it seems ZFS has enough of it's own problems at this time.

I really think ZFS is a long term goal for Apple, and not intended for Leopard.

(speculation on my part)

So are you saying Sun's CEO was lying the other day?
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post #98 of 157
6/9/07 at 4:00pm
We're not going to have to wait for ZFS folks. Remember the WWDC beta is going to be about a full month later than the last Beta in early March. ZFS was workable two betas ago.

Sun is booting OpenSolaris on ZFS and Thumper uses it already production hardware.

case insensitivity has been "fast tracked"

http://www.opensolaris.org/os/commun...C4644C98986C1F

With 4 months to sweeten the Leopard Beta before October I have no doubts that ZFS will be ready in October. Simply give users the choice.

1. Install HFS+ (Recommended)
2. Install ZFS (read help file about concerns)

I'd rather run Time Machine on ZFS myself.
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post #99 of 157
6/9/07 at 5:36pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Macvault View Post

So are you saying Sun's CEO was lying the other day?

I don't think he was lying, I just think that too mch is being read into the word "default." Don't get me wrong, ti would be great if Apple and Sun have worked out these ZFS issues but it seems like it's time prohibitive. I think the most likely answer is that he spoke incorrectly. He should have used option instead.

According to InfoWorld...
"Only hours after his initial posting, Sun's Hamilton revised his blog so that the ZFS line read: "Jonathan noted that Apple is planning to use the ZFS file system from OpenSolaris in future versions of their OS." In the blog comments, he also added: "I hope this clears up some of the confusion and concern I may have caused."

Though nice, it's just not the simplest answer. I gotta go with Hakim on this one, Baby!
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post #100 of 157
6/9/07 at 6:16pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by meelash View Post

ummm.... That was not a yes or no question...

It wasn't a yes or no answer either. Was he answering yes, or no?
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post #101 of 157
6/9/07 at 6:18pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Macvault View Post

So are you saying Sun's CEO was lying the other day?

I don't like these kinds of responses.

If you mean; was he mistaken?, that would be more correct.
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post #102 of 157
6/9/07 at 6:20pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by hmurchison View Post

We're not going to have to wait for ZFS folks. Remember the WWDC beta is going to be about a full month later than the last Beta in early March. ZFS was workable two betas ago.

Sun is booting OpenSolaris on ZFS and Thumper uses it already production hardware.

case insensitivity has been "fast tracked"

http://www.opensolaris.org/os/commun...C4644C98986C1F

With 4 months to sweeten the Leopard Beta before October I have no doubts that ZFS will be ready in October. Simply give users the choice.

1. Install HFS+ (Recommended)
2. Install ZFS (read help file about concerns)

I'd rather run Time Machine on ZFS myself.

I agree. I've also said that Apple would offer it as an option, the way they offer the UNIX file system, but recommend that most not use it.
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post #103 of 157
6/10/07 at 7:29am
But why would Schwartz be mistaken (or lying)?

Schwartz would not make such a mistake.

hmurch is right. ZFS has had a lot of time to mature. And with Leopard's release in 5 months, all the remaining problems (if there still are some) will be solved. This FS has been around since 2004...has been up and running on OS X near the end of December/early January and will have had over 10 months of work put into making it work well. If that's not enough time, how long IS enough? 5 years? 10?
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post #104 of 157
6/10/07 at 7:41am
Quote:
Originally Posted by kim kap sol View Post

If that's not enough time, how long IS enough? 5 years? 10?

I don't know but I contacted Microsoft to find out.
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post #105 of 157
6/10/07 at 10:18am
Quote:
Originally Posted by kim kap sol View Post

But why would Schwartz be mistaken (or lying)?

Because when Schwartz spilled the beans, Jobs called him and screamed at him for doing so. Schwartz then had to backtrack.

It's totally obvious that ZFS as the default filesystem in Leoparad is one of the top secret features that Jobs wanted to shock the world with.
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post #106 of 157
6/10/07 at 11:13am
Quote:
Originally Posted by kim kap sol View Post

But why would Schwartz be mistaken (or lying)?

Schwartz would not make such a mistake.

hmurch is right. ZFS has had a lot of time to mature. And with Leopard's release in 5 months, all the remaining problems (if there still are some) will be solved. This FS has been around since 2004...has been up and running on OS X near the end of December/early January and will have had over 10 months of work put into making it work well. If that's not enough time, how long IS enough? 5 years? 10?

It's interesting that even people in the position of Schwartz can get excited over the prospect of something that they consider to be significant, and blurt out something, that, after consideration, might have been a bit more than it should have been.

I haven't programmed for a while, but, I can see the issues arising with this being THE default FS, right now.

That doesn't mean that Apple hasn't solved them.

Hopefully we will find out tomorrow.

I'm going to fly to California early tomorrow morning, so that I can hear Job's presentation three hours earlier than I would find out here in NYC, because of the time Zone difference.







Just kidding.
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post #107 of 157
6/10/07 at 11:53am
Quote:
Originally Posted by JavaCowboy View Post

Because when Schwartz spilled the beans, Jobs called him and screamed at him for doing so. Schwartz then had to backtrack.

It's totally obvious that ZFS as the default filesystem in Leoparad is one of the top secret features that Jobs wanted to shock the world with.

I doubt this for the reason that consumers don't know or give a rip about filesystems. Jobs could blather on and on but consumers would never get excited because bragging about filesystems is like bragging about kernels. It's boring stuff.

Storagemojo talks about Apple's patent for "touchless fs conversion

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
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post #108 of 157
6/10/07 at 12:46pm
I doubt ZFS would be used for boot volumes for Leopard, but there are two options still...

The first is just using ZFS by default for Time Machine. This is pretty obvious and has been discussed to death.

The second is using a flash boot volume w/o ZFS and then using ZFS on the main disk storage including user home directories, Apps, etc. This way we get the fast booting and other goodies from the flash upgrade and get the ZFS goodness w/o addressing the boot issue.
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post #109 of 157
6/10/07 at 5:47pm
Bugs aside, it's entirely conceivable that Leopard got pushed back for ZFS. ZFS, while not a marketable feature in itself, is probably one of the most important Leopard feature. It's the backbone for a ton of new features that *are* consumer features.

Time Machine was a cool idea, but when I first heard how it was actually implemented on HFS+, I thought "This is some kind of hack job, it's not gonna work very well." And it wouldn't have worked very well...it would have been portable in the sense that it would have worked on most file systems but the performance and the efficiency would have been lost by the very nature of how it handled snapshots.

The kernel isn't a marketable feature...but a crash-free OS *is*. So is a solid backup system that's basically hands free. So is a storage system that is as easy to manage as adding RAM to a computer.

Sure, one excuse for the delay might have been the ridiculous amount of bugs in Leopard...but that's never stopped Apple from shipping x.0 software. ZFS is one of those more believable excuses. It has to be there in x.0 and bugs with it would have been a show-stopper for everyone...not just a hand full of people.
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post #110 of 157
6/10/07 at 5:54pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by kim kap sol View Post

Bugs aside, it's entirely conceivable that Leopard got pushed back for ZFS. ZFS, while not a marketable feature in itself, is probably one of the most important Leopard feature. It's the backbone for a ton of new features that *are* consumer features.

Time Machine was a cool idea, but when I first heard how it was actually implemented on HFS+, I thought "This is some kind of hack job, it's not gonna work very well." And it wouldn't have worked very well...it would have been portable in the sense that it would have worked on most file systems but the performance and the efficiency would have been lost by the very nature of how it handled snapshots.

The kernel isn't a marketable feature...but a crash-free OS *is*. So is a solid backup system that's basically hands free. So is a storage system that is as easy to manage as adding RAM to a computer.

Sure, one excuse for the delay might have been the ridiculous amount of bugs in Leopard...but that's never stopped Apple from shipping x.0 software. ZFS is one of those more believable excuses. It has to be there in x.0 and bugs with it would have been a show-stopper for everyone...not just a hand full of people.

What else would benefit (feature wise) from ZFS file system? Could spotlight be improved?
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post #111 of 157
6/10/07 at 5:56pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by kim kap sol View Post

The kernel isn't a marketable feature...

Makes me wonder if Apple will finally dump the Mach kernel.
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post #112 of 157
6/10/07 at 6:05pm
This doesn't belong here, but it was entertaining. I found this on Digg, surprisingly.
A MacRumors thread lambasting the newly released iPod from 23-OCT-2001...
"It's now at the online Apple Store!
$400 for an Mp3 Player!
I'd call it the Cube 2.0 as it wont sell, and be killed off in a short time...and it's not really functional.
Uuhh Steve, can I have a PDA now?"
I got a kick out it, perhaps you will too.
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post #113 of 157
6/10/07 at 6:25pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by backtomac View Post

What else would benefit (feature wise) from ZFS file system? Could spotlight be improved?

Anything that accesses disks could be improved especially applications that cache a lot of data like Photoshop. As they say:

"The architecture in ZFS removes just about all constraints on I/O order, which allows us to run the disks much closer to full I/O capacity than current filesystems/volume managers."

One thing I was worried about was fragmentation but according to their FAQ, the allocation algorithms handle this. So maybe this would be an end to the Bootcamp partitioning problems.

http://www.sun.com/emrkt/campaign_do..._zfs_perf.html
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post #114 of 157
6/10/07 at 8:26pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

Anything that accesses disks could be improved especially applications that cache a lot of data like Photoshop. As they say:

"The architecture in ZFS removes just about all constraints on I/O order, which allows us to run the disks much closer to full I/O capacity than current filesystems/volume managers."

One thing I was worried about was fragmentation but according to their FAQ, the allocation algorithms handle this. So maybe this would be an end to the Bootcamp partitioning problems.

http://www.sun.com/emrkt/campaign_do..._zfs_perf.html

Excerpt from Sun:

Quote:
Q: Is ZFS bootable, and if not, when will it be?
A: It won't be in the first ZFS release; look for it in a Solaris 10 OS update.

Clearly, OS X won't be using ZFS as the boot/default filesystem. Hell, Solaris doesn't even have it bootable.

This Sun document on ZFS installation has some tidbits that I can see people inferring from [Time Machine being one of them], but there is obvious a lot of information lacking:

http://www.sun.com/emrkt/campaign_do...s_install.html

Sun specifically discusses UFS to ZFS migration and nothing else.

Since HFS+ is the preferred format for OS X then Apple would have had to do all the work for Sun as well as do joint collaboration to expose from both companies the innards of both filesystems to make a HFS+ -> ZFS conversion possible.

I can see ZFS support being included into OS X Server and some extensive GUI Tools to help administer ZFS Pools, but I don't see OS X Leopard Client moving to ZFS as the default filesystem.
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post #115 of 157
6/10/07 at 11:10pm
Look how old that FAQ is, it was released when ZFS was first announced. Solaris 10 wasn't even out by then. Seriously, nothing on those pages is up to date. ZFS has been bootable for a few weeks at least, and the issues for getting OS X booting off of it are different than for Solaris. Apple has been working on this for a while now and could have had booting working for quite some time now.
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post #116 of 157
6/11/07 at 1:35am
Quote:
Originally Posted by kim kap sol View Post

Bugs aside, it's entirely conceivable that Leopard got pushed back for ZFS. ZFS, while not a marketable feature in itself, is probably one of the most important Leopard feature. It's the backbone for a ton of new features that *are* consumer features.

Time Machine was a cool idea, but when I first heard how it was actually implemented on HFS+, I thought "This is some kind of hack job, it's not gonna work very well." And it wouldn't have worked very well...it would have been portable in the sense that it would have worked on most file systems but the performance and the efficiency would have been lost by the very nature of how it handled snapshots.

The kernel isn't a marketable feature...but a crash-free OS *is*. So is a solid backup system that's basically hands free. So is a storage system that is as easy to manage as adding RAM to a computer.

Sure, one excuse for the delay might have been the ridiculous amount of bugs in Leopard...but that's never stopped Apple from shipping x.0 software. ZFS is one of those more believable excuses. It has to be there in x.0 and bugs with it would have been a show-stopper for everyone...not just a hand full of people.

Those are really well-tought comments, kim kap sol, but I still have doubts. I don't believe Apple would risk such a move without having clear benefits for the consumers, capable to counter-balance the possible shortcomings. A crash-free OS would probably be such a feature, but what "a crash-free OS" is supposed to mean here? Alright, some hours yet and we will know more.
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post #117 of 157
6/11/07 at 5:21am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Thinine View Post

Look how old that FAQ is, it was released when ZFS was first announced. Solaris 10 wasn't even out by then. Seriously, nothing on those pages is up to date. ZFS has been bootable for a few weeks at least, and the issues for getting OS X booting off of it are different than for Solaris. Apple has been working on this for a while now and could have had booting working for quite some time now.

Yep, it says on wikipedia:

"ZFS is currently not available as a root filesystem on Solaris 10, since there is no ZFS boot support. The ZFS Boot project recently successfully added boot support to the OpenSolaris project, and is available in recent builds of Solaris Nevada.[10][11] ZFS boot is currently (20070208) planned for a Solaris 10 update in late 2007."

Late 2007 sounds familiar so it will definitely be ready by the time leopard is shipping if as Thinine says it isn't already. I think Apple will have it ready for the beta release and developers will need to test it out.
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post #118 of 157
6/11/07 at 7:32am
Leopard was not feature frozen officially yet. So it's not just lack of resources for squashing the bugs because of the engineers moved to iPhone.

Unlike Microsoft guys, Job's does not like to announce a feature until he is absolutely sure it will be implemented.

Let's hypothesize: when Jobs announced Leopard delay he wanted ZFS but there were problems identified, and he was not sure they will be resolved. Depending of the progress, he will or will not announce full ZFS support in 10.5.0. The hints from Sun indicate that ZFS will be supported, but whether it will be the default FS is still questionable. We will see in few hours. The point is, no matter on outcome, Apple is very serious about ZFS.

If Apple is almost ready with ZFS, but not 100% ready, I don't believe it will wait another 2 years for 10.6. Jobs may announce optional/developer/experimental support or some other marketing trick to make room for it in a 10.5.x release.
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post #119 of 157
6/11/07 at 2:11pm
Sorry to be slow, I'm still unclear - will ZFS even be an option in Leopard? I wasn't aware of it being mentioned today ...
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post #120 of 157
6/11/07 at 10:25pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by mpw_amherst View Post

Sorry to be slow, I'm still unclear - will ZFS even be an option in Leopard? I wasn't aware of it being mentioned today ...

There was no public word on that. I am afraid only developers which assisted the conference will know (the only ones they will receive the Leopard beta).
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