Read / write ZFS beta for Leopard reportedly sent to developers
By Donald Melanson 
posted Jun 26th 2007 2:07PM
posted Jun 26th 2007 2:07PM
It looks like the on again off again reports of support for the newfangled ZFS file system in Leopard are on again, at least according to the latest word from Mac Rumors, which is citing unspecified "published reports" on the matter. What's more, this apparently isn't the stripped-down, read only incarnation of ZFS we heard about earlier this month, but a full-fledged read/write version, the beta of which has reportedly already been sent to developers. ZFS, for those not up on their file systems, was developed by Sun and promises a range of advantages over lesser file systems, including storage pooling, block-journaling, and other things that a rare few get really excited about.Update: Reader skwasha notes that apparently the ZFS Leopard files have been pulled, but produced a document regarding the ZFS dev preview, which states: "ZFS is a new filesystem from Sun Microsystems which has been ported by Apple to Mac OS X. The initial (10.5.0) release of Leopard will restrict ZFS to read-only, so no ZFS pools or filesystems can be modified or created. This Developer Preview will enable full read/write capability, which includes the creation/destruction of ZFS pools and filesystems." So there ya go.
just go to http://zfs.macosforge.org for the current beta for Leopard.
could somebody actually explain what zfs's advantages are?
Well... it has one of those nifty letters from the tail end of the alphabet.
Going through WikiPedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS
ZFS has the following advantages:
- Large file size: 16 Exabytes
- Large volume size: 16 Exabytes
- open-source
- 128-bit filesystem (hence, the 16 EB max)
- Copy-on-write feature where blocks of data are written to, and new data is allocated. Also:
"An advantage of copy-on-write is that when ZFS writes new data, the blocks containing the old data can be retained, allowing a snapshot version of the file system to be maintained. ZFS snapshots are created very quickly, since all the data composing the snapshot is already stored; they are also space efficient, since any unchanged data is shared among the file system and its snapshots."
Does that remind anyone of OS X's "Time Machine" feature? It sure does to me. And, thus I think ZFS is or can be used for that reason because of its efficiency.
- improved I/O throughput and write load
There are more features that are listed, but it sounds better than the other currently used filesystems:
FAT32
- Maximum file size is 4 GB
- Max. volume size is 8 TB
- 32-bit
- proprietary, closed-source; requires license from Microsoft
NTFS
- Max file size is 16 TB currently; architecturally 16 EB (not yet implemented)
- Max volume size is 16 TB currently; architecturally 16 EB (not yet implemented)
- proprietary; closed-source; requires license from Microsoft
HFS+
- Max file size is 16 EB
- Max volume size is 16 EB
- Mac OS X only
Of course, you can just read Wikipedia and it'll tell you more in detail. I don't want to make this post longer than it already is.
http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits.ars/2006/08/15/4995
This fatbits on ars gives the best arguments I've seen for ZFS on OS X
Besides FAT32, NTFS and HFS+ (which most are a tad dated), there is ext2/3/4, XFS, ReiserFS and UFS that are more common among linux and BSD.
These linux, BSD and unix file systems are perfectly fine for their uses. While ZFS sounds interesting, for the average user and probably beyond, it will most likely be overkill.
I know, I know, Engadget should not be bothered to actually (god forbid) investigate their reports, especially if it is as hard as this:
1. Log in to your or create a free account on developer.apple.com
2. Click on "Downloads"
3. Download (as of today) the free beta ZFS version for Leopard and (gasp) Tiger (which, yes, can write ZFS as well)
I have signed up for ADC from http://connect.apple.com and browsed to "Downloads" but don't see a free beta of ZFS for Leopard/Tiger.
The download was removed this morning....
Yea, use a BETA file system (not) released by Apple, it's agreat idea!
Theres no chance of file corruption...
BITTORRENT!!!
Yes! Bittorrent! But where!? I want to play with ZFS but I don't want to install Solaris. I don't care if it is unstable.
This probably isn't an appropriate request, but can anyone point me in the direction of a place to download the ZFS r/w beta that was pulled from Apple's site?