ZFS open source project abruptly shuts down, Snow Leopard weeps icy tears
By Darren Murph 
posted Oct 24th 2009 2:09PM
posted Oct 24th 2009 2:09PM
[Via TUAW]
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The average Apple fanboy probably has no idea what ZFS is, but when Apple announced it as a feature, they sure were hyping it as the greatest thing ever and a feature the competition does not have.
The problem is Apple was relying upon a feature to be provided by a 3rd party (the open source community). You should never, never announce a feature to be available in the next version of your software if you do not have direct control over that feature. If Apple does not have control over the ship date, feature set, release quality, etc., then they should not have announced it.
Of course, this will be treated like it is nothing, not a big deal, and nobody was really excited about it. But people will mock that other file storage system not shipping - WinFS.
Well, lol.
I'm sure all 20 users(except Apple itself) of SL Server will be very disappointed.
Well, to be fair, Apple's server needs are pretty extraordinary. There's MobileMe, OSX automatic updates, Apple.com, the online store, the movie trailers site (which streams HD trailers), iPhone push notifications, developer mailing lists, ADC, and quite a few open-source projects like WebKit. And then, of course, they have to serve up iTunes, which is one of the biggest cloud services out there - serving music, movies and apps to iPhones, iPod touches, Macs, PCs and AppleTVs.
Those are really demanding server projects, and if they're all running OSX Server, that's a pretty big advert for its ability right there. Don't be so quick to write it off.
Most of Apple (and many large company)'s sites are hosted by Akami on Linux and an extremely small number of Windows servers if something needs MS frameworks. OS X server is a niche product for managing Mac deployments only; it cannot compete with Linux, or even Windows, as a general purpose server. ZFS would have been more useful as a general replacement to the antiquated HFS+; perhaps Apple will use ext4 or adopt the ReiserFS project.
http://searchdns.netcraft.com/?position=limited&host=apple.com
Indeed, mostly Linux or unknown, only one OSX on the first page, and another on the second.
@rob .. you don't know what your talking about. Akamai does not 'host' the Apple website. It caches it. That's what it does. The Apple Online Store, Mobile Me, iTunes Music Store, iTunes Push are all Apple WebObjects web apps running on Mac OSX Server / XServes. I used to work for Apple and have seen the servers in person.
If Apple really runs all their services on Apple servers, that would be a major nightmare to adminitor, that would be a lot of servers.
Apple's servers are a joke if you are looking for real power. Our hosted apps and virtual infrastructure is run off of HP DL580's (4 quad core) or DL785's (8 quad core) depending on the needs. An Apple server could barely keep up with the low end DL300 series and with server real estate at a premium, you need to get the most out of your server.
@Nathan, WebObjects was a way to rapidly deploy java apps. It is being depreciated in future Xcode releases, as pure web apps or .net is the norm nowadays. Apple would be insane to host the ITMS; contracting Akamai for that duty allows the store to have vast amounts of bandwidth available to it, as Akamai hosts most everything on the internet that requires substantial bandwidth and can dynamically allocate it. The costs to actually purchase the bandwidth the ITMS uses at peak would be astronomical, and would go to waste 90% of the time, not to mention the hardware costs.
@zargon .. it isn't a nightmare to administer and generally works quite well. App servers generally are more IO bound than CPU bound so XServes actually work quite well. They have a lot of them more for redundancy than anything.
@rob .. you have no clue what your on about. WebObjects is moving towards being open sourced and will for at least the next 5-10 years be the technology that underpins Apple's web apps. I know this for a fact. For the heavily hit parts of iTMS and for all static resources Apple does use Akamai. Everything else e.g. MobileMe is hosted internally as is most of iTMS. And yes Apple does spend a lot on bandwidth/hardware but they are a billion dollar company making billion dollar profits.
@Nathan: When did you leave Apple?
As an avid apple user, I can say honestly that true Fan Boys have little to no idea what this means. Your point is invalid.
OPEN SOURCE NAO
The hatred on this website is both pointless and deterring. I'm to the point where I don't want to read engadget anymore.
Now on topic: Who really cares? does ZFS have some fairy dust that other file systems don't?
Ask iTinkerBell
I totally agree! At the of the day who really gives a shit about what OS you're using? It's all advancements, we all benefit regardless of our OS of choice. People need to get over themselves
yes. ever had OS X crap out on you because permissions, or ever had to run disk utility to fix file system errors? those are errors, and they shouldn't be there.
ZFS would fix that, but oh well. here's for whatever new file system they come up with then! (HFS+ is almost 10 years old)
Lots of things. Copy-on-write, low overhead snapshots (would have made Time Machine really fly), per-folder encryption, on-disk compression, file de-duplication, to name but a few.
It has astonishing data recovery features, as well as most all of the features other modern filesystems (ext4, ntfs) have such as an encrypting filesystem, file system based compression, ease of logging changes in folders (HUGE backup benefit; MS has something close in shadow volume copy service, but I don't think any other filesystem has native support),
It's not HFS+ or UFS - that's a huge plus already.
Bill Gates bailed out Apple for a reason. =)
Agree, this site is starting to remind me of Foxx News, inacurate and annoying.
Yes, it's the fairy dust called 'modernity'.
For most users the difference would be trivial. It's on a par with something like Grand Central Dispatch - ordinary users won't notice, it just would be nice for developers and system administrators, and might enable certain new user-visible features along the line.
For example, I personally would appreciate its ability to accurately store file modification times. I use a Mac, and HFS+ only has one-second accuracy (ZFS is nanosecond or so, or more realistically, whatever the computer clock does). That doesn't matter to most people; it caused me annoyance and wasted twenty minutes until I figured it out.
Not related to the Mac issue, obviously (outside Apple nobody much uses Mac servers) or HFS+ but with regard to using ancient file systems, there was also a serious bug that caused significant system downtime where I work because one developer didn't know that the ancient file system in question had a low limit on the number of files in a directory (64k). The equivalent limit on ZFS is, I dunno, something approaching the number of atoms in the universe.
Also, though ZFS might be 'open source' it's hardly been developed by geeks in their spare time - it's a Sun product, used (I believe) in some of their top-end storage systems.
I don't understand why the editors don't hide more of the obvious crap -- perhaps they just don't have the time? Editorial control on many sites can be a good thing. Leaving the site more open and "free" often just means pages of comments that aren't worth reading. YouTube is the perfect example of this, even with it's moderation system.
That's a shame, this was pretty cool technology.
Not that ZFS really has any great amazing features that average users are going to need.
Lots of things. Copy-on-write, low overhead snapshots (would have made Time Machine really fly), per-folder encryption, on-disk compression, file de-duplication, to name but a few.
Daniel Eran Dilger has written an article about this. It has to do with the Oracle takeover of Sun and a patent infringement suit by NetApp against Sun.
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/10/23/apple-shuts-down-zfs-open-source-project/#more-3902
Evidently, Apple thinks this is another "world of hurt" it would rather avoid at this point.
Yes, but it's roughlydrafted. I can guarantee you that he'll have written other articles saying how wonderful it is.
Dillger is a clown with no credibility.
Wrong. The correct term is "bag of hurt"
@Mark, you know, attacking the source is pretty useless. It *is* obvious Dilger has a serious bias, but that does *not* mean he's wrong. Why don't you add to the discussion by showing weaknesses in his arguments?
This is the same problem I had with the Zune HD thread where his "5 Myths" article was referenced. Rather than any constructive debate regarding its validity, it was just one idiot after another attacking the source. As though that fallacious tactic had any merit.
As someone anxious to establish himself in the mobile app world, I'd like to think I could someday see some valuable insight on the merits of the Zune's platform and SDK when released.
Back on topic; with the loss of ZFS, and the news that Apple is looking for talent to progress their own, new file system, who's to say they *won't* incorporate the benefits discussed in this thread that ZFS promised? And make it open sourced, as they did with Grand Central?
@Cro
Because he has a history of contradicting himself whenever he needs to change tack to make his latest round of apologetics. He may get some things right but even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and again.
@Cromagazine,
He does not really have a strong argument against ZFS... BTRFS is still in its beta and even Oracle says the following: "Btrfs is under heavy development, and is not suitable for any uses other than benchmarking and review. The Btrfs disk format is not yet finalized, but it will only be changed if a critical bug is found and no workarounds are possible.". Therefore to say that Oracle already has a file system and would not support ZFS is far from true.
Another issue with the editorial was the statement " Most home Mac users don’t even have multiple hard drives to pool with ZFS."... So what about Time Machine, something that would greatly benefit from ZFS? I feel that this editorial is what most non-apple users hate about Apple Fanboys: completely apologetic for every decision made by Apple, even if it is detrimental to the community.
@Mark. Again, broad statements with no examples to back them up. In other words, useless.
@Blind Boy. Thanks! That's the type of response I was looking for; relevant information from primary sources that constitutes an actual rebuttal to Dilger's piece.
I enjoy reading his stuff, as it's a nice break from the pro-windows extremism I see at the other tech sites I frequent. But it's great to see sensible counterarguments.
@Cro
'Pro Windows extremism'?
OK. That's a new one.
If you want a good example of Dilger being a hypocrite search for his opinions on why third party apps are useless before the iPhone app store came along and his complete reversal of opinion after.
@Mark Anderson
I completely agree. I'm pro-Apple but I won't read Dilger's articles because he always seems to try putting a positive spin on bad news for Apple. John Gruber took him to task when he tried suggesting that the Uniform Type Identifiers in Snow Leopard are an improvement over the old Creator Codes (http://daringfireball.net/2009/10/congrtlns-osx), mostly for being a) wrong, and b) filling a long article full of unimportant waffle. Given this and other articles of his that I've read and found to be both cringeworthy and inaccurate, I do not consider him to a reliable source of quality information. Rather, I'd read his articles if I felt the need to hear from the Apple cheerleading group.
@Kelmon
I agree. Whilst I may disagree with what Gruber says from time to time at least you know he's done his research and will be consistent in his approach. He has more integrity in his little figure than Dilger has in his entire body.
I don't mind people having strong views as long as they're consistent and can back them up.
ZFS, like 64-bitness, is one of those things way more people get excited over then will actually realize any practical benefit from.
Then when they get it, all they do is benchmark it and say 'oooo - is it FASTER now?' - even though performance is relatively unimportant as to why the technology is being adopted.
Now the question is, what is Apple going to replace the now defunct ZFS with? I don't have a problem with HFS+ but I do like to see progress on the filesystem front and it seems both Microsoft and Apple have both failed to deliver a new filesystem.
Are the old ones "Good Enough", even with SSD and new styles of storage arising?
As I understand it, ZFS was great if you had more than one HD to put into a pool, but otherwise it wasn't that much better. Sounds like it wouldn't have been much use to the average user anyway.
Which would probably be why Apple was less interested adding it to the client operating system and more interested in adding it to the server operating system. Former is the "average user," latter is where ZFS makes a lot of sense.
"Sounds like it wouldn't have been much use to the average user anyway"
That line right there truly infuriates me. Why does the Mac community (or lack there of) have such low opinions of themselves? I know a good number (I cannot say a majority or not) back up their computers using Time Machine or another type of external HD. Having ZFS would allow for faster, more secure (in that one does not lose data), backups. I do not see how a community loses out by adding more options.....
I am not saying ZFS should become the main file system, but allowing a user to choose really adds to the experience. Hopefully in the future Apple will add this type of functionality to HFS+ (or a new FS), but in the mean time, allowing the use of ZFS will greatly add to the user experience.
Apparently they hired a few people so they could work on making a new file system of their own, in house. Makes sense from their point of view, if it isn't open, then others cant use it.
I just want Microsoft and Apple to be able to share a file system easily.... ExFAT please?
I want to be able to plug a hard drive into a computer, not worry about what its formatted as of have to buy software for each machine to get it to work fully.
Put your storage out in the network. Realistically, how often do you need to physically move a hard disk from one machine to another?
There are some quirks, but I've got a NAS with storage available on the LAN via Samba/SMB/CIFS, accessed by Windows and Mac machines. It uses EXT3 filesystem since the "appliance" is a cheap little Linux device underneath the covers, but since the partitions are mounted over the network, I don't think it matters.
It's highly unlikely to be a licensing issue with Sun. ZFS is free and open source anyway, but apart from that, it's released under the same license as dtrace, another Sun technology that Apple were more than happy to integrate into 10.5.
hah... the people who wrote Dtrace were furious about the specifics of how it got put into 10.5. You couldn't use Dtrace with iTunes because Apple didn't want anyone using it to try and circumvent the DRM.
It's not Sun now, it's Oracle.
@numpty
Sorry, but open source doesn't mean it's free of licensing restrictions. There is a specific license attached to ZFS that prevents it from being just slapped in anywhere. GPL and CDDL are incompatible - see http://kerneltrap.org/node/8066
Just like iChat on iPhone, 7 hour batteries and "it just works", yet again Apple has been shown to be promising what it cannot deliver.
Told.
I don't know where you're getting iChat on iPhone from, but I never heard anyone but rumor sites talk about it. I believe the battery life on the new laptops has been verified by plenty of independent sites -- even those who don't get 7 hours show that Apple returns a closer % of advertised battery life versus the competition.
Also, you don't know what ZFS is. Or WinFS, to steal an above comment.
I'm voting you down for being a Smarty Pants.
I get 7-hour days from it all the time.
Of course the troll has no clue what ZFS is.
to the contrary. you totally know what zfs is
The open source ZFS project has been inactive for about a year if you look at source commits. Clearly some work has been going on for snow leopard that has not been reflected in the open source project. Therefore, the discontinuation can mean many things: Discontinuation of ZFS at Apple, or that Apple continues to develop ZFS for OS-X but that they will or can not maintain it as open source - and this could be related to licensing issues. It could mean that apple continues to play with it some more, but does not consider their implementation ready and they do not want to expose their activity or inactivity in public while there are ongoing legal negotiations. Or it could mean that they do not want to expose their ZFS playground because they are not sure they will ever (or near term) use it for technical reasons (they might have pulled it from snow leopard because of too many bugs), and dropping open source will lower expectations
For those who are actually interested, there's a really interesting discussion on the matter over at Slashdot. I'm playing with ZFS on some Solaris boxes, but I'm mostly using it for flexibility in creating sub-volumes. I'm not doing anything with the cooler features like disk pooling yet, since we mostly do hardware RAID.
My contact with ZFS has been through the freenas project, an alternative to Drobo drives.
Hopefully ZFS isn't dead, but if Apple is abandoning it, that is not a great sign.
I bet most Apple fanboy probably don't know what ZFS is for and if they do know about it is.
I bet most don't know how to install it and no there is no GUI to help you with that haha.
Yes Apple Killed ZFS Project but that does not mean its Over as long SUN keeps developing ZFS its here to stay.
HAHAHAHAHA... sure Apple and Open Source..
Please come on.... and somebody expected something like this going though all the way? hahahahaha
APPLE SUCKS... but yeah sure is pretty and EXPENSIVE and you cand do the same with less money in other platforms.
HAHAHAHAHA!
ReiserFS needs to get renamed - still kinda murder-y
Maybe this is the first step of apple buying the Rights to the tech and making them the sole controller of it's direction.
whatevs.. they can pick it up if they really want to use it
ZFS is probably a little ahead of its time just like most of Sun's other products but Apple has good reason to not support it anymore due to compatibility restrictions and also implementation problems. While it would have been a major step up in terms of a file system, it's a step down in terms of ease of use and ease of implementation which Apple has always concentrated on. Maybe in time, they'll reconsider or go towards an even better FS.
Snow Leopard. Apple's M.E.
Apple sux oranges. Just wait for Microsoft to implement ZFT properly. At least Microsoft is working for our benefit and not just for CASH.
zfs has many high-end features that mostly benefit server users.
It has however also a whole bunch of features that would benefit the average user:
a) on disk parity, which allows detection and correction of bit errors
b) compression and encryption => more efficient use of space and better data security
c) snapshots, which would make TimeMachine about an order of magnitude faster and would have made other features possible, such as creating undo snapshots while a laptop is unable to connect to the TimeMachine drive, and backing up the hourly snapshots when the laptop is reconnected to the backup drive
There are plenty more features.
Check out these if you're actually want to be informed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems
Since it was the potential lawsuits and licensing issues that killed ZFS on the mac, I can only hope that they get Oracle to provide them with BTRFS. It would at least unify two of three OSes, it has all the modern features needed, going it alone for a filesystem is a ton of work and testing to get production ready, and it is much further along than anything Apple will come up with.
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wait what? Apple Fanboys were excited about ZFS, and we are now slamming WinFS?
Somebody has been reading his own doodles too much...