Apple will include ZFS in OS X Leopard, Sun confirms
We've heard rumors for a while that Apple's forthcoming Leopard operating system will use the next-generation file system called ZFS.
Now it seems to be official. As MacRumors.com notes, Sun Microsystems' Jonathan Schwartz said on Wednesday that ZFS would be "the file system" for Leopard, succeeding HFS+.
ZFS, which (sort of) stands for Zettabyte File System and was originally developed by Sun, is a huge step forward from traditional file systems. It protects all files with 64-bit checksums to detect and fix data corruption and, as a 128-bit file system, can handle many orders of magnitude more space than current versions of Microsoft Windows, OS X, or Linux. (There is a movement afoot to port ZFS to Linux but it's complicated by restrictions in the GNU General Public License.)
One of the biggest changes ZFS offers is what's known as a pooled storage model. What that means is that physical drives become even more removed from logical volumes, and getting more free space simply means plugging in more drives. The file system takes care of the rest for you.
ZFS also offers snapshots of the state of a file system at a particular time, handles RAID-type backups automatically, and offers optional compression. Here are 10 reasons to reformat your hard drives with ZFS.
Perhaps the best thing about ZFS, though, is that its 128-bit limit should last for quite a while. One post calculated that fully using that much storage (2^128 = 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 bits) would require more energy than it would take to boil Earth's oceans.
Declan McCullagh, CNET News' chief political correspondent, chronicles the intersection of politics and technology. He has covered politics, technology, and Washington, D.C., for more than a decade, which has turned him into an iconoclast and a skeptic of anyone who says, "We oughta have a new federal law against this." E-mail Declan. 
:-)
OS X is already very good, now it will put everything out there to shame. We may see more of this type of collaboration between Sun and Mac in the future, which is good as I hate MS BULL crap OSes.
>and Mac in the future, which is good as I hate MS BULL crap
>OSes.
Well, it's hardly a new thing, as it has been happening since the
second set of PowerMacs. OpenFirmware is a Sun technology.
NetInfo is built on a Sun technology. Cocoa/java?
- 1st Out of the Stall
- by Kalama June 7, 2007 8:23 AM PDT
- Once again, Apple will be first out of the stall bringing some
- Reply to this comment
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(10 Comments)very good upgrades to the table.
Interesting enough... a lot of flack when the delayed delivery was
mentioned back in May ... http://news.com.com/
5208-10784_3-0.html?
forumID=1&threadID=26602&messageID=257215&start=0
Let's see if my old mind can remember a thing or two ... Macs
did not use 5.25" floppies, went right to the 3.5 inchers ... SCSI
anyone ? USB ? FireWire ? Bonjour ? Anybody add to the list ...
ZFS fills a gap in the box. and it's something that you can
"upgrade" to when OS X 10.5.x comes out. Maybe your desktop
Mac won't take advantage of the massive storage. But, file
security in terms of viability will be vastly improved. Single hard
drive machines most likely will have a noticable speed bump
( not quite RAID ZERO ) in file access ... well for a few days until
one gets used to it.
Just as there's Moore's Law on porcessor speed/power, there's
Jim's Law on Storage ... and somebody will prove it right, even in
a ZFS system ... "The Junk Accumulates as the Space Is Available;
Closets, Garages & Hard Drives!" If you don't believe it, just look
around you neighborhood at homes with garages, and the cars
won't fit !