ZEVO ZFS on OS X project now part of GreenBytes

Update: GreenBytes has announced that starting in September, the ZEVO Community Edition product will be offered as a freely downloadable binary. As they get closer to the launch date, more info will be shared -- including a rundown on new, improved features from the previous commercial version.

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The ZEVO ZFS technology for Mac, developed by former Apple engineer Don Brady at his company Ten's Complement, has been acquired by enterprise storage vendor GreenBytes. Brady announced the transition on Twitter and on the Ten's Complement site; he is joining the GreenBytes development team.

ZFS is a file system invented in 2004 at Sun (now part of Oracle) which offers next-generation support for huge volumes, fault tolerance and other essential Big Storage features. The history of ZFS on OS X is somewhat convoluted. In the run-up to OS X Leopard 10.5, it seemed likely that ZFS would be used as an alternative or replacement for HFS+ as the Mac's primary file system format. That never materialized, and the announced/anticipated support for ZFS in Snow Leopard never shipped either. Apple's open source ZFS project was closed down in 2009.

Ten's Complement originally announced the ZEVO product in March of 2011. As to the future of the project, GreenBytes' spokesman Michael Robinson responded to TUAW's inquiry: "ZEVO's ZFS on OS X is safe. Ten's Complement has joined GreenBytes to continue their work and now they have more development support." Robinson says that GreenBytes will have more to share regarding ZEVO's future "down the line."

Thanks Bill.