ZFS to become default file system in OS X?

[Charles Dyer]

On 06 Jun 2007, at 15:48:22, Chad Leigh wrote:

>
> On Jun 6, 2007, at 1:44 PM, Kevin Callahan wrote:
>
>>
>> On Jun 6, 2007, at 12:36 PM, Chad Leigh wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Jun 6, 2007, at 12:59 PM, Matt Penna wrote:
>>>
>>>> There's been speculation on this for some time, but according to  
>>>> a Sun keynote presentation, ZFS will "become the file system in  
>>>> Mac OS X" and this will be announced at WWDC. I assume this  
>>>> means it will be the default, since it was already known that it  
>>>> was to be included.
>>>>
>>>> http://www.sun.com/jsp_utils/rvideo.jsp? 
>>>> video=74cd4547-01df-440b-823d-48878ae34c73
>>>>
>>>> He mentions Mac OS X at around 27 minutes in. Real Player  
>>>> required, unfortunately.
>>>>
>>>> More on ZFS for those who are unfamiliar with it: http:// 
>>>> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettabyte_File_System
>>>>
>>>> Seems like very positive news!
>>>
>>>
>>> This would assume they have a bootable version of ZFS running  
>>> (which they could have), something Sun does not even ship yet.
>>>
>>> I am excited. I run a ZFS file server on Solaris right now
>>>
>>> Chad
>>
>> what might be some of the benefits a home network will see ?
>
> Well, all your disks become one volume (assuming a raidz or raidz2  
> configuration).

Ah... I don't know very much about ZFS, but... wouldn't doing things  
that way have, well, problems?

1 right now I have a (two-fifths empty) internal 250 GB drive  and  
two (maybe two thirds full) external FireWire drives, one a 250 GB  
and one a 320 GB, running on my main system at all times. Because I  
have the system set to sleep the drives when possible, every now and  
again I get to wait for one or another of the drives to spin up. How  
does ZFS configured as One Giant Disk (in my case, One Giant 820 GB  
disk) handle this? Is there a problem of some type or am I worrying  
unnecessarily?

2 When I want to back up I plug in an additional 320 GB drive (System  
Backup) and a 500 GB drive (Non System Backup) and have SuperDuper!  
and Silverlining respectively dump files over. Would ZFS see the two  
backup drives as part of the One Giant Disk, now 1640 GB, or would  
there be Two Giant Disks, or what? How do I control this, how do I  
set it up, where can I find more info? I mount the backup drives and  
then, after backup is complete, immediately unmount and power them  
down 'cause I don't want my backups spinning. Would this be a problem  
with ZFS?

3 I've heard that ZFS needs hefty CPU power. Someone elsewhere  
suggested that it might require 64-bit CPUs, which, if true would  
eliminate any G4-based Macs... such as the eMac that's running OS X  
Server for my home net. Does ZFS require 64-bit CPUs?

4 How do I transfer data from HFS+ to ZFS? Preferably without buying  
another hard drive, She Who Must Be Obeyed is unlikely to think much  
of my wanting another expensive toy...

I looked at <http://www.sun.com/2004-0914/feature/>, but quite a bit  
of that article seems to be marketing bumf. What's the real deal? I  
also looked at <http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/demos/ 
basics/> which showed some interesting stuff... but not much about  
moving data from existing file systems to ZFS.

>   And you should be able to increase the size of that volume by  
> adding in a new disk.  No more having to worry about a boot disk  
> versus extra data disks and needing more space and adding it in but  
> now how do you move your data around or split across the new  
> disk...  That sort of thing.  Plus data integrity.  Look at the  
> wikipedia article and google ZFS
>
> Chad
>
>
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