Sun's ZFS file system may be coming to OS X
If this does happen, it could be one of the most important additions made to OS X yet.
I'll link to the AR's article. You can go from there to more info on this. The fact that Apple is making the overture, is what is important here.
http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits.ars/2006/4/27/3777
I'll link to the AR's article. You can go from there to more info on this. The fact that Apple is making the overture, is what is important here.
http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits.ars/2006/4/27/3777
Comments
Originally posted by melgross
If this does happen, it could be one of the most important additions made to OS X yet.
I'll link to the AR's article. You can go from there to more info on this. The fact that Apple is making the overture, is what is important here.
http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits.ars/2006/4/27/3777
Holy smokes this is cool.
I'd love to see Apple and Sun partner on this. ZFS sounds like just the type of filesystem that can/would catapult OS X onto another level.
I really like the data integrity stuff. Imagine RAID-5 like performance right in the FS without the need for slow parity read/writes
I also like the Storage Pool idea and of course knowing that I'll never be able to afford 256 Zettabytes of drive space thus it's the FS that'll last my whole life.
Here's to hoping that something comes from this.
ZFS is a new kind of filesystem...
...We've blown away 20 years of obsolete assumptions, eliminated complexity at the source, and created a storage system that's actually a pleasure to use.
... I love breaking the rules for the better!
How long as this been around?
Originally posted by iPeon
... I love breaking the rules for the better!
How long as this been around?
If you mean the filesystem itself, a year and a half, about.
This is considered to be a breakthrough for what it does for the cost.
If Apple does go ahead with this, it could mean big bucks for them in the long run.
MS won't use it, of course. And Linux has problems with it because of the GPL, and Sun's licensing.
That's not a problem for Apple.
Perhaps with Scott stepping down as CEO and the hippy guy taking over there will be a bit more movement with the two companies.
It looks a bit like Pixar/Disney all over again.
Originally posted by TednDi
Apple and Sun have had a rocky past. Apparently Apple and Sun talked merger/buyout at one point but Steve and Scott didn't get along too well. Sun is currently in the toilet with a stock price of $4.95 way down from the 70's that it was during the dot com boom.
Perhaps with Scott stepping down as CEO and the hippy guy taking over there will be a bit more movement with the two companies.
It looks a bit like Pixar/Disney all over again.
Also, Sun put this into open source recently. That's probably why Apple is now interested. They will still need a license, but no payments.
Apple has basically had a pretty good relationship with Sun. Many people over there use Mac's. Especially in the Java development teams.
Sun and Apple server wildly different markets but I'd love to see them intersect with this Sun technology. Why let Linux have all the fun with ReiserFS 4?
After all OS X is proclaimed to be the "Worlds most advanced Operating System" let's live up to that.
Originally posted by hmurchison
Yes Sun employees are keen on Macs. I've spoken to many and they show Apple love.
Sun and Apple server wildly different markets but I'd love to see them intersect with this Sun technology. Why let Linux have all the fun with ReiserFS 4?
After all OS X is proclaimed to be the "Worlds most advanced Operating System" let's live up to that.
And not only isn't FS 4 working yet, in several areas it is well behind this in reliability, as that isn't what he's been working towards, just speed, basically.
Originally posted by melgross
And not only isn't FS 4 working yet, in several areas it is well behind this in reliability, as that isn't what he's been working towards, just speed, basically.
ReiserFS is working fine, and there are not reliability issues. Don't spread anti-Linux FUD dude.
Originally posted by Gene Clean
ReiserFS is working fine, and there are not reliability issues. Don't spread anti-Linux FUD dude.
3 is working fine. 4 isn't finished yet. It's out, but it has a way to go yet. They are still looking at additions.
I'm not spreading FUD. Read the articles for yourself. John understands these matters better then either of us. I'm not putting it down, but ZFS seems to be more advanced in these areas, according to other opinions.
An interesting quote from him;
" The folks at Sun have shown the way forward in a manner that's difficult to ignore. They're putting their product?and their source?where their collective mouth is. Or rather, their minds. Even plucky innovators like Hans Reiser have not been able to think outside the box that keeps file systems in their traditional place. With ZFS, Sun has broken the logjam. Free your minds, people, and your disks will follow."
Originally posted by Gene Clean
ReiserFS is working fine, and there are not reliability issues. Don't spread anti-Linux FUD dude.
While I don't have personal experience, ReiserFS 4's reliability issues seem a well-known problem.
Originally posted by melgross
If this does happen, it could be one of the most important additions made to OS X yet.
I'll link to the AR's article. You can go from there to more info on this. The fact that Apple is making the overture, is what is important here.
http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits.ars/2006/4/27/3777
I wonder where ex BeOS file system architect fits into this? He has been at Apple for the last few years and helped develop spotlight.
More can be found on Wikipedia and his home page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_Giampaolo
http://www.nobius.org/~dbg/
Originally posted by deestar
I wonder where ex BeOS file system architect fits into this? He has been at Apple for the last few years and helped develop spotlight.
More can be found on Wikipedia and his home page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_Giampaolo
http://www.nobius.org/~dbg/
Possibly nowhere. There is the mistaken belief that someone who is hired is being always hired for specific work done in the past that is going to be directly applicable to the present.
He might just have been hired for his known skills and understanding, but not for his particular work in the past.
Originally posted by Splinemodel
We'll see. I'm more of a speed freak than a reliability freak, and from what I've read, ZFS is typical Sun. In other words, runtime speed seem to be of little concern to them. All of the "extensibility" features are nice, but it seems like massive bloat for my iMac. I'd for sure be happy with Reiser on the mac: I'm not sure if I'd even give a damn if ZFS ever shows up on the mac. Perhaps there's some use for it in OS X Server.
This is actually of more use to people with iMac's, because they never back up, and they don't even bother to check their HD on a regular basis. Corporate environments are far more careful. It may be of less benefit to them.
Originally posted by Splinemodel
We'll see. I'm more of a speed freak than a reliability freak,
I know what you mean, but I agree with the following quote:
"My position is that the PC industry should just bite the bullet now and get it over with. Apple proved the feasibility (if not necessarily the desirability) of this approach with Quartz. Make the hard decisions early ("Everything is composited! No exceptions!"), perhaps even before the hardware is really ready, and work out the details later. This is a reasonable approach when the pay-off is big enough. I think data integrity is such a situation?even more so than modernizing the display layer."
By the time this gets implemented (if it ever does) I don't think extra cpu cycles will be that hard to come by in your average desktop P.C.
http://storagemojo.com/?p=174
Very Cool. Why?
Here are the highlights of some of the changes you?d see with ZFS on Leopard, the next version of the Mac OS.
No More Disk Warrior
Data corruption on PCs and Macs is a sad and stupid fact of life. Power failures, flaky RAM, poor grounding, (slowly) failing hard drives, driver glitches, phantom writes and more conspire to rot your data.
ZFS eliminates that. All blocks are checksummed and the checksum is stored in a parent block. ZFS always knows if the block is correct and/or corrupt. Every block has a parent block (with one obvious exception that gets special treatment), so the entire data store is self-validating. You?ll never have to wonder if all your data is correct again. It is.
No RAID Cards or Controllers
ZFS implements very fast RAID that fixes the performance knock-off against software RAID. In ZFS all writes are the fastest kind: full stripe writes. And the RAID is running on the fastest processor in your system (your Mac), rather than some 3-5 year old microcontroller.
Just add drives to your system and you have a fast RAID system. With Serial Attach SCSI and SATA drives you?ll pay for the drives (cheap and getting cheaper), cables and enclosures.
No More Volumes
Every time you add a disk to your Mac you see another disk icon on the desktop. If you want to RAID some disks you use Disk Utility (or something) to create the volume. Slow, error-prone, confusing.
ZFS eliminates the whole volume concept. Add a disk or five to your system and it joins your storage pool. More capacity. Not more management.
Backup Made Easy
ZFS does something called snapshot copy, which creates a copy of all your data at whatever point in time you want. Copy the snapshot up to a disk, tape or NAS box and you are backed up.
Create a snapshot on every write if you want, so if your database barfs you can go back to just before it choked.
But That?s Not All!
For in-depth treatment of ZFS see here and here. Includes links to more technical info and benchmarks.
Apple Enterprise prodducts to use ZFS??
It's also doubtful that ZFS will make it into Leopard. Unless Apple has very fast coders and a good QA team (and we all know how good the QA team really is)...file system problems is no joke, if Apple releases a ZFS that destroys data...well, you can get the rest.
Originally posted by kim kap sol
Except that a failing hard drive is a failing hard drive and no file system will magically make a failing hard drive work like a champ...I don't know why it's part of the 'No Disk Warrior' example.
It's also doubtful that ZFS will make it into Leopard. Unless Apple has very fast coders and a good QA team (and we all know how good the QA team really is)...file system problems is no joke, if Apple releases a ZFS that destroys data...well, you can get the rest.
The reason why he's saying no Disk Warrior isn't needed is because ZFS has 64-bit checkusm for data integrity. It even prevents "Silent Corruption" that can affect a RAID set without the controller knowing there is corruption happening.
If a hard drive fails you simply replace it and the filesystem updates the drive based off of the checksums.
I don't think ZFS makes it into Leopard either but you never know.
ZFS appears to applications as a standard POSIX file system--no porting is required. But to administrators, it presents a pooled storage model that eliminates the antique concept of volumes, as well as all of the related partition management, provisioning, and file system sizing problems. Thousands--even millions--of file systems can all draw from ZFS' common storage pool, each one consuming only as much space as it needs. The combined I/O bandwidth of all of the devices in that storage pool is always available to each file system.
OS X is built to add another FS and I genuinely think Apple is interested in ZFS enough. They don't have a bunch of legacy hardware and software to protect.
Originally posted by hmurchison
The reason why he's saying no Disk Warrior isn't needed is because ZFS has 64-bit checkusm for data integrity. It even prevents "Silent Corruption" that can affect a RAID set without the controller knowing there is corruption happening.
If a hard drive fails you simply replace it and the filesystem updates the drive based off of the checksums.
I don't think ZFS makes it into Leopard either but you never know.
OS X is built to add another FS and I genuinely think Apple is interested in ZFS enough. They don't have a bunch of legacy hardware and software to protect.
Well...I hope ZFS makes it into Leopard also...but it's got to be rock-solid if it does.
Originally posted by kim kap sol
Well...I hope ZFS makes it into Leopard also...but it's got to be rock-solid if it does.
No doubt. I could handle slow but it's gotta have bulletproof reliability.
The storage pool thing is really cool while it eases management I'm sure when you do decide to manage it there are lots of powerful options as well.