Sun says Apple is switching to ZFS in Leopard

You dealt with it when Apple switched you from MFS to HFS, and again you were switched from HFS to HFS+ (and even journaled HFS+), and you'll deal with it again: according to Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz (whom you may know for his totally righteous pony tail), Apple is going to use Sun's crazy advanced ZFS filesystem when they move users over to Leopard. The material advantages may not be immediately apparent to the average user (when was the last time you whipped up a multi-exabyte file?), but it will do some excellentay things like storage pooling (aka virtual storage), block-journaling, and plenty of other nerdy things about which you can read up on elsewhere. Expect to hear more about this one next Monday at WWDC.

Watch - Schwartz talks it up [Via MacRumors]
Read - More about why this is a Good Thing (TM)

[Deezee @ Jun 7th 2007 12:26AM]

Yay?

[Eric M @ Jun 7th 2007 12:47AM]

It would be cool if Microsoft also switched over to this file system for future versions of Windows, or somehow integrated it into Vista since WinFS was a failure, but I'm probably just dreaming.

[nicleT @ Jun 7th 2007 12:49AM]

Sun is hot!!

[impressme @ Jun 7th 2007 12:49AM]

Oh yeah baby, bring on this dead sexy beast of a file system to OS X puh-lease! I so want it yesterday! ZFS should make life so much easier for data storage management.

Learn more about ZFS here and dr00l to your hearts content:

http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/

[rektide @ Jun 7th 2007 1:19AM]

if you "so want it yesterday" you should have installed solaris or freebsd.

[ToAsTy @ Jun 7th 2007 12:55AM]

they really need macOS for PC, which is what they almost have anyway. Screw Microsoft!

[John Doe @ Jun 7th 2007 1:12AM]

But I want a stable OS on my PC.

PS-That was not a joke either. *wants to kick his MBP across the room*

[Kevin @ Jun 7th 2007 1:15AM]

Great success!

[rektide @ Jun 7th 2007 1:19AM]

power conservation, BAH, we like our mac products hot and bloated.

[enemes @ Jun 7th 2007 1:24AM]

Makes a lot of sense for higher-end systems. Doesn't hurt for low-end. And can't beat the price. Smart move on Apple's part. That said there might be migration pains.

[rektide @ Jun 7th 2007 1:22PM]

its only mac, but if we put zfs on all computers, global power consumption would drastically increase. maybe not gigawatts but certainly megawattage: every single block you read would require checksum computations. if done on a general computer processor this would consume enormous aggregate amounts of power and cpu time.

you'd have to put checksum hardware in all cpu's first (significantly reducing power usage per byte) before it could be efficient.

frankly i dont see the advantage in single drive systems, data integrity is a binary characteristic (your either drive runs or it will not boot) and theres plenty of other flexible log based journaling systems.

[andrew harrison @ Jun 7th 2007 2:07AM]

I can't see Apple moving to a different file system without having a very tight migration system. That said, an archive and install would probably work just fine.

[Kit F @ Jun 7th 2007 1:27AM]

So an exabyte is one million terabytes?

[Jean-Michel Decombe @ Jun 7th 2007 11:35AM]

Yes, indeed. Here is the complete list of prefixes:

http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/prefixes.html

And for the complete nerds, here is the complete list of binary prefixes:

http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html

[oGMo @ Jun 7th 2007 1:33AM]

How about something simple like.. case-sensitivity? ;)

[Ignacio @ Jun 7th 2007 9:32PM]

You got it backwards, what they need is case *insensitivity* otherwise lots of apps (like, Photoshop for instance) break. Guess who requested this addition, and why it was fastracked in so little time:
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/arc/caselog/2007/244/;jsessionid=4DEEAE13A4489C28E3C4644C98986C1F

Also, Apple made an extension to HFS+ (HFSX) back on 10.3 (Panther) days to allow case-sensitivity, but since it can cause lots of problems for apps that assume file names to be case insensitive, it was never the default.

[... @ Jun 7th 2007 1:59AM]

"they really need macOS for PC, which is what they almost have anyway. Screw Microsoft!"

I don't think you understand the differences between these two OS's.

Windows is meant to work on literally thousands upon thousands of different types of hardware, software, networks, etc.

Mac OS only has to work with their pre-determined hardware, software, networks, etc.

So what system is going to be more stable, the one that needs to work with a million different systems or the one that only needs to work with a few? Of course mac's OS is going to be more stable. What would happen if Mac OS was ported to PC's? Same problems as Windows, most likely worse because Mac has no experience with that type of OS.

Mac OS is not better then Windows in every single possible way...

[andrew harrison @ Jun 7th 2007 2:14AM]

i'm not sure that "it's not as stable because it needs to work on thousands of configurations" makes os x worse than windows.

[Colin @ Jun 7th 2007 3:14AM]

Absolutely. This is one of the things people tend to forget when the fanboys clash: Mac OS is stable* because Apple makes the whole package. As andrew harrison said, that doesn't make Windows or Mac OS better or worse than each other; as a person who has chosen to run a Mac based on PERSONAL PREFERENCE (fanboys take note) I have to commend Microsoft for the sheer amount of hardware they support out of the box.

Where I find Apple wins is with the ease of use thing: Not once, on my Mac, have I plugged in a *supported* peripheral and have it fail to mount or a driver crash. I find Apple tends to support emerging technologies better than Microsoft. This is probably because they have a smaller, more loyal user base who are willing to forgive when Apple makes harsh decisions like replacing ADB with USB. Installing my Bluetooth dongle on my Windows PC was a pain: Download installer, run it before plugging in hardware, plug in hardware, dreaded "dong-dong-dong" sound, repeat. Installing it on my Mac involved plugging it in.

The concept here is that people choose what's best for them. I chose a Mac because I find the OS is organized the way I expect it to be, and it works in my rhythm (totally subjective, I know.) Apple is unlikely to sully it's track record by opening to any old x86 box, and MS will simply continue to hone it's skills in the market it dominates.

Oh, and as an aside-- it drives me *nuts* when people use "Apple" and "Mac" interchangeably. "Mac" has "no experience with that type of OS" because Mac is a brand name and a platform. I think you meant "Apple". ;-)

[Vanillacide @ Jun 7th 2007 6:51AM]

On my MacOSX computers there are drivers available for all my old bits of hardware, as there are for my WinXP computer.

Don't see how that makes Mac more stable and WinXP less so.

Interestingly, more of my older hardware works with MacOSX than does with WinVista.

Now which is the compatible OS that supports lots of hardware and has driver issues again?

[zoara @ Jun 7th 2007 7:38AM]

It doesn't matter *why* the Mac is more stable, it just matters *whether* the Mac is more stable. That's all that bothers me, anyway.

[rp @ Jun 7th 2007 9:23AM]

You're expecting Apple to give us a tight migration system...

You must be a switcher. Apple doesn't care about anything older than it's most current product. Or, maybe you think the Lombards got a fair shake? How about the last G5 purchasers? Nice classic support too. There's too many cases of Apple not giving a rats ass to expect them to do anything like what you're suggesting.

[Greg @ Jun 7th 2007 2:19AM]

It's about time!

I was somewhat underwhelmed by the preview of Leopard and Time Machine, but if ZFS makes it in, Time Machine will be so much better!!

[Stephen @ Jun 7th 2007 2:35AM]

But what will happen to my current installation of OS X? Will I need to reformat-- please no! ZFS sounds nice, but I'm not gonna upgrade to Leopard if it means loosing all of my data.

[Colin @ Jun 7th 2007 3:18AM]

If Microsoft can convert FAT32 to NTFS, I'm sure Apple and Sun can convert HFS+ to ZFS.

[Tired_ @ Jun 7th 2007 2:59AM]

Um, ZFS doesn't support boot drives yet...did Sun fix that for OSX and not for Solaris?

[Colin @ Jun 7th 2007 3:16AM]

http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/boot/
I'm sure Apple's not going to force an unbootable filesystem on users.

[Richard @ Jun 7th 2007 3:27AM]

"Sun is hot!!"

Tarzan begins to learn about the stars

;-)

[Ian @ Jun 7th 2007 3:47AM]

ZFS can't be used currently as a boot filesystem true, but I don't think that is what it is for.

One of the main benefits of ZFS is snapshots of the data over time. Remember Time Machine in Leopard? It's fairly obvious that Time Machine and ZFS are made for each other...

[Ian @ Jun 7th 2007 3:59AM]

By the way, I don't mean to say Time Machine requires ZFS - in fact the current version doesn't. It uses HFS+ so that it works right now...

http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits.ars/2006/8/15/4995

However, I'm sure ZFS support is in there and Time Machine has an abstraction layer based on the filesystem.

ZFS support in OS X doesn't mean a full migration. It's probably just another supported file-system, much like HFS+ Case Sensitive or UFS. As a result, it's probably more likely to have full support in the OS X Server version as ZFS is a fantastic file-system for big storage needs. Needless to say, if there is full support, my secondary data drive will be converted to a ZFS storage pool.

[jvillafranca @ Jun 7th 2007 4:22AM]

Suddenly, it becomes clear why they implemented Time Machine just now, when System Restore has been available since Windows Me

[rektide @ Jun 7th 2007 1:37PM]

"Suddenly, it becomes clear why they implemented Time Machine just now, when System Restore has been available since Windows Me" -jvillafranca

yup! transactional file systems rock.

[mike @ Jun 7th 2007 4:23AM]

Apple is unlikely to sully it's track record by opening to any old x86 box, and MS will simply continue to hone it's skills in the market it dominates.
--
Just one small thing: what OS market?
It's a monopoly because, there is no market. Get Linux? First of all, most people on this planet don't know Linux exists, and the ones that do (like me) don't want to go near it because it looks unattractive, geeky, and way out of my league in terms of MAINTENANCE.

Buying a new computer with an Apple logo does not constitute a viable alternative to Windows because that's new hardware, not software.

So, if you have a Dell sitting on your desk, what is this OS market you speak of. Plainly, MS dominates because there is no market. Bill Gates said it himself many years ago, developers benefit from having a natural monopoly. The only downside is.. the OS maker's hubris.

Anyway, I have a Macbook and I love it, but it bugs me when 'techies' (that's being polite) always try to sit on the fence with this: yes you should slam Microsoft for having stuff that is 5 years out of date, considering all their resources.

[Dan @ Jun 7th 2007 4:51AM]

Although this "slip of the tongue" might earn Jonathan Schwartz a fair bit of scorn in Cupertino, I don't blame him. You can be sure that when Steve announces ZFS support during his keynote on Monday, Sun–the creator of this fine technology–will not be mentioned much, if at all. In that regard, Schwartz is just giving his company some much needed, and deserved, publicity.

And yes, I agree with the comments above that it is quite clear that Time Machine and ZFS are perfect complements, especially if backing-up to an external zpool...

[BeyondtheTech @ Jun 7th 2007 6:46AM]

They jumped from H to Z, so what's happens next when they come out with a new type of file system? Use greek letters? Double alphabet? Here's the new ThetaFS.

[k0a10 @ Jun 7th 2007 9:32AM]

I think Linux is the winner here. It often doesn't support very, very new hardware (unless the vendor is Linux friendly, like for server hardware) but.. I had an old ATI TV Tuner that wouldn't work under Windows no matter how many times I reinstalled. Finally put it in a Linux box and it worked immediately. Same goes for sound cards. Once they're generalized down to chipsets, the drivers are usually built into the kernel.

[noob @ Jun 7th 2007 9:26AM]

i am not convinced that osx is more stable... I have hardcrashed a lot more times since I have had OSX on my 2nd gen mbp than with windowsxp sp2.

the stupid OMG DIM SCREEN ERROR MESSAGE...very annoying. In fact my MBP stopped wanting to shut down and would hang at the blue screen with the stupid circle for like hours, so I had to hard reset it.
Either way after I reformatted it was fine though.

[tjn @ Jun 7th 2007 9:28AM]

The only thing that would be disappointing about this would be losing the ability to read a Mac's file system from Linux or windows (with currently available software).

As I understand it Linux is unlikely to ever get support for zfs as the licensing is incompatible.

[k0a10 @ Jun 7th 2007 9:49AM]

It can be hacked in with FUSE, if there's a will there's a way. Though, as this conversation http://www.csamuel.org/2006/12/30/zfs-on-linux-works/ mentions, "Linux would be a perfect alternative to Solaris storage servers."

For some reason Engadget seems to exclusively associate "Open source" with Linux, but of course there is FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenSolaris, and even an open source reimplementation of Windows (http://www.reactos.org). Who knows, any of them could "come from behind" to become significant (though perhaps only as the official underdog ;)).

[zargon @ Jun 7th 2007 1:13PM]

The Apple folks are getting far to excited over ZFS. In concept, ZFS sounds like a great filesystem, who knows, it may even be a great file system. The fact is though, it really isn't going to matter for the average or above average user. The area where ZFS is going to and is meant to excel is heavy trafficed file storage. Sure, it has perks here and there and is based on a new and interesting concept, but the gain for most people is not going to affect them one way or another.

Right now, ZFS has way too much hype around it for what it really is and what it will do in the real world of daily use.

[ElvisLives @ Jun 7th 2007 1:17PM]

Will Leopard be able to write to NTFS volumes?

[rektide @ Jun 7th 2007 1:37PM]

FUSE. Fuse is the basis for ntfs-3g, which permits ntfs rw mounting.

Highly doubtful this will ever be put into the OS itself, and i hope not ever: DIY or go home. Maybe some day Apple will voluntarily shell out the cash to MS to include it in the OS, I suggest simply learning how to use your computer as a tool as an alternative.