Apple's Leopard will use ZFS, but not exclusively
Apple has clarified reports regarding the use of Sun's ZFS file system in Leopard, confirming that ZFS is present in the operating system but that Apple has not yet made it the default file system.
Last week, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz said that Apple planned to announce a switch to ZFS as the basic file system for Mac OS X at its Worldwide Developers Conference. That announcement didn't arrive on Monday as part of the WWDC extravaganza, and then Information Week reported Monday that an Apple executive denied that ZFS was present in Leopard.
The full story emerged on Tuesday: apparently the executive misspoke. Leopard will support two file systems, the HFS+ technology currently found in Mac OS X, as well as ZFS, a next-generation file system developed by Sun and unveiled in 2005. However, HFS+ will remain the default option.
If you're familiar with the ins and outs of file system technology, you'll know the ramifications. If you don't, here's a quick and dirty explanation.
File systems outline how information is stored on a computer. They are complicated beasts that generally are kept in place for years as operating systems change around them. Windows supports two file systems, the older FAT32 technology and the default NTFS technology, which has been around since the introduction of Windows NT in 1993.
Apple's HFS+ was introduced with Mac OS 8.1. Adding ZFS to the mix basically means that you can take advantage of a number of features, like adding huge amounts of storage, that my colleague Declan McCullagh outlines here. At some point, Apple will likely make ZFS the default file system for Mac OS X, but Sun hasn't even gotten around to doing that yet for Solaris 10. These transitions can take years.
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Internet search, including Google, Yahoo, online advertising, and portals, as well as the evolution of mobile computing. He has written about traditional PC companies, chip manufacturers, and mobile computers, spending the last three years covering Apple. E-mail Tom. 
bootable RAIDZ.
option at install. However, beware the re-format. I doubt it will
be a migratory option.
But then, I would be pleased to be
wrong about that, and it safely converts existing HFS data to ZFS ...
but I ain't countin' on it.
So I'm using Time Machine to back up all my home computers to a disk being served up by my Airport Extreme when I see I'm about to run out of space. "No prob" I say to myself..."I can just add another disk and ZFS will just add it to the pool".
For me (and I bet a few others) this is the killer app for ZFS.
RP
- Time Machine not based on it
- by AndreaFerro June 12, 2007 9:20 PM PDT
- Time machine works perfectly on a non ZFS drive. And as far as I
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(7 Comments)can tell it does not even use the ZFS functionality, at the moment
(not even if ZFS is actually used on either drive).
Apple has already publicly acknowledged that ZFS will be one of
the available FSs in Leopard (the others being HFS+ and, for non
system drives, FAT). But were they to decide to drop ZFS, all
Leopard functionality would still be there. Including Time Machine.