Very cool technology in OpenSolaris
I’ve always been happy with Linux on the server, and I’ve never felt any need to experiment with OpenSolaris, until I read this bit about ZFS:
ZFS is the most amazing filesystem I’ve ever come across. Integrated volume management. Copy-on-write. Transactional. End-to-end data integrity. On-the-fly corruption detection and repair. Robust checksums. No RAID-5 write hole. Snapshots. Clones (writable snapshots). Dynamic striping. Open source software. It’s not available on Linux. Ugh. Ok, that sucks. (GPL is a double-edged sword, and this is a perfect example). Since it’s open-source, it’s available on other OSes, like FreeBSD and Mac OS X, but Linux is a no go. *sigh* I have a feeling Sun is working towards GPL’ing ZFS, but these things take time and I’m sick of waiting.
The OpenSolaris project is working towards making Solaris resemble the Linux (GNU) userland plus the Solaris kernel. They’re not there yet, but the goal is commendable and the package management system has taken a few good steps in the right direction. It’s still frustrating, but massively less so. Despite all the rough edges, though, ZFS is just so compelling I basically have no choice. I need end-to-end data integrity. The rest of the stuff is just icing on an already delicious cake.
August 2nd, 2009 at 12:01 am
[...] Yesterday I learned about ZFS. Apparently there is a file system called btfs, which bring some of the same features to Linux: Imagine you are a Linux file system developer. It’s 2007, and you are at the Linux Storage and File systems workshop. Things are looking dim for Linux file systems: Reiserfs, plagued with quality issues and an unsustainable funding model, has just lost all credibility with the arrest of Hans Reiser a few months ago. ext4 is still in development; in fact, it isn’t even called ext4 yet. Fundamentally, ext4 is just a straightforward extension of a 30-year-old format and is light-years behind the competition in terms of features. At the same time, companies are clamping down on funding for Linux development; IBM’s Linux division is coming to the end of its grace period and needs to show profitability now. Other companies are catching wind of an upcoming recession and are cutting research across the board. They want projects with time to results measured in months, not years. [...]