Apple to adopt ZFS as default file system for Leopard

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  • Reply 21 of 156
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    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.
  • Reply 22 of 156
    shadowshadow Posts: 373member
    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
  • Reply 23 of 156
    dhagan4755dhagan4755 Posts: 2,152member
    If iPhone is based on Leopard, could the iPhone OS be running on ZFS?



    Also will ZFS make things faster/snappier??
  • Reply 24 of 156
    slewisslewis Posts: 2,081member
    Null.
  • Reply 25 of 156
    ajmasajmas Posts: 597member
    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?
  • Reply 26 of 156
    audiopollutionaudiopollution Posts: 3,226member
    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?
  • Reply 27 of 156
    ajmasajmas Posts: 597member
    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.
  • Reply 28 of 156
    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.
  • Reply 29 of 156
    lupalupa Posts: 202member
    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?
  • Reply 30 of 156
    hdasmithhdasmith Posts: 145member
    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.
  • Reply 31 of 156
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    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.
  • Reply 32 of 156
    vinney57vinney57 Posts: 1,162member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by addabox View Post


    The Steve is powerful. Next, when you go to the Sun site you'll find a pottery enthusiast page.



    Do not pre-announce the Steve's magics.







    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.
  • Reply 33 of 156
    akacakac Posts: 512member
    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.
  • Reply 34 of 156
    macvaultmacvault Posts: 323member
    Yea for ZFS! It sound very cool!
  • Reply 35 of 156
    crobincrobin Posts: 9member
    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.
  • Reply 36 of 156
    aegisdesignaegisdesign Posts: 2,914member
    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.
  • Reply 37 of 156
    nerudaneruda Posts: 439member
    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.
  • Reply 38 of 156
    robrerobre Posts: 56member
    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.
  • Reply 39 of 156
    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
  • Reply 40 of 156
    nine9ninnine9nin Posts: 7member
    1. So easy your mom could administer it



    ZFS is administered by two commands, zpool and zfs. Most tasks typically require a single command to accomplish. And the commands are designed to make sense. For example, check out the commands to create a RAID 1 mirrored filesystem and place a quota on its size.



    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.



    3. Filesystem, heal thyself



    ZFS employs 256 bit checksums end-to-end to validate data stored under its protection. Most filesystems (and you know who you are) depend on the underlying hardware to detect corrupted data and then can only nag about it if they get such a message. Every block in a ZFS filesystem has a checksum associated with it. If ZFS detects a checksum mismatch on a raidz or mirrored filesystem, it will actively reconstruct the block from the available redundancy and go on about its job.



    4. fsck off, fsck



    fsck has been voted out of the house. We don't need it anymore. Because ZFS data are always consistent on disk, don't be afraid to yank out those power cords if you feel like it. Your ZFS filesystems will never require you to enter the superuser password for maintenance mode.



    5. Compress to your heart's content



    I've always been a proponent of optional and appropriate compression in filesystems. There are some data that are well suited to compression such as server logs. Many people get ruffled up over this topic, although I suspect that they were once burned by doublespace munching up an important document. When thoughtfully used, ZFS compression can improve disk I/O which is a common bottleneck. ZFS compression can be turned on for individual filesystems or hierarchies with a very easy single command.



    6. Unconstrained architecture



    UFS and other filesystems use a constrained model of fixed partitions or volumes, each filesystem having a set amount of available disk space. ZFS uses a pooled storage model. This is a significant departure from the traditional concept of filesystems. Many current production systems may have a single digit number of filesystems and adding or manipulating existing filesystems in such an environment is difficult.



    In ZFS, pools are created from physical storage. Mirroring or the new RAID-Z redundancy exists at the pool level. Instead of breaking pools apart into filesystems, each newly created filesystem shares the available space in the pool, although a minimum amount of space can be reserved for it. ZFS filesystems exist in their own hierarchy, children filesystems inherit the properties of their parents, and each ZFS filesystem in the hierarchy can easily be mounted in different places in the host filesystem.



    7. Grow filesystems without green thumb



    If your pool becomes overcrowded, you can grow it. With one command. On a live production system. Enough said.



    8. Dynamic striping



    On by default, dynamic striping automatically includes all deivces in a pool in writes simultaneously (stripe width spans all the avaiable media). This will speed up the I/O on systems with multiple paths to storage by load balancing the I/O on all of the paths.



    9. The term "raidz" sounds so l33t



    The new RAID-Z redundant storage model replaces RAID-5 and improves upon it. RAID-Z does not suffer from the "write hole" in which a stripe of data becomes corrupt because of a loss of power during the vulnerable period between writing the data and the parity. RAID-Z, like RAID-5, can survive the loss of one disk. A future release is planned using the keyword raidz2 which can tolerate the loss of two disks. Perhaps the best feature is that creating a raidz pool is crazy simple.



    10. Clones with no ethical issues



    The simple creation of snapshots and clones of filesystems makes living with ZFS so much more enjoyable. A snapshot is a read-only point-in-time copy of a filesystem which takes practically no time to create and uses no additional space at the beginning. Any snapshot can be cloned to make a read-write filesystem and any snapshot of a filesystem can be restored to the original filesystem to return to the previous state. Snapshots can be written to other storage (disk, tape), transferred to another system, and converted back into a filesystem.
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