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Why? Are you missing something using it? It's not like it's broken...

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Why? Are you missing something using it? It's not like it's broken...
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I think they are in the same boat as the rest of us. Journalled metadata, 4 billion files per directory, 16TiB maximum file size, and 16TiB maximum volume size is plenty for most folks today. And orginzations who need more have other options.

But in a few years... we'll all need something.

Well, except for ZFS. Sun got tired of the bit size merry-go-round, and with its 128 bit allowances, should be good for another 150 years or so, assuming a doubling of requirements every 1.5 years.

I can't blame them, really.

It doesn't have the sophistication of ZFS when it comes to pooling drives together. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettabyte_File_System#Storage_pools

ZFS is particularly important for people who deal with large files. Since a high percentage of computer graphic designers use Macs, ZFS is very beneficial. Also, Apple has attracted video editing professionals, and ZFS fits perfectly with this.

Its as broken as Fat32 was to Windows - it is incredibly precious, and speed wise, it is terrible when compared to ZFS - using it right now on my laptop. What ZFS offers not only brings it up to NTFS standards, but exceeds it in term so performance and reliability.

Now, HFS+ isn't going to be totally thrown out, they'll probably still keep using it for their iPod, but I don't seem them using it anything more than just that.

What benchmark did you run to determine that.

NTFS reliable? LOL! You must be kidding me.

HFS+ is fine for the default file system for the client. 99% of people out there dont and wont know what the heck ZFS is and what you can do with it.

For us %2 or so who do know can use ZFS on non bootable drives etc. And I am sure there will be better support for ZFS in Leopard server then in Leopard client.

I think it will be really good for large client file systems. (People who have a LOT of music, MP3's and have external drives) And it's good for large file systems for databases etc. But ZFS doesn't support quotas and a lot of file permission features you find in other file systems.

So on file servers it sucks. :-(

Um...ZFS supports per-filesystem quotas and NFSv4 ACLs last I checked. Where's the problem?

Excuse me, I never said it was reliable - stop putting words in my mouth. Compared to Fat32, it is very reliable. From my use of it with Windows 2000/XP/Vista, I never found it unreliable.



Considering that ZFS will yield a massive improvement in performance, improved RAID capabilities for those who purchase Mac Pro's, you seem to make the same bigoted statements that all anti-Mac people make - that those who use Mac are obviously clueless morons.

May I suggest you do some reading about ZFS, and then you'll realise that it doesn't just benefit technology boffins but Apple's high end customers as well.



Databases are generally done on raw devices - no file systems required. As for ZFS and lacking - what is it lacking? again, look at the information about ZFS; ZFS is different to any other file system - it has new ways of doing old things. Read, Read and Read, then come back and come to a conclusion.

@samad:
> Apple seriously needs to update HFS+ to something more modern

Cause it is missing what? (honest question, not ranting)

Edit: OK, read everything. I missed it since useful explanations were not referenced as a reply to samad's post, so I asked right away. Sorry…

Edited 2007-06-13 00:31

It seems to be a problem across the board. Apple, Microsoft and Linux are all using oldish filesystems, thus preventing the implementation of interesting new features. Heck, SUSE even reverted to ext3 as the default!

Yeah...Mr. Schwartz shouldn't have said anything. Steve Jobs likes it when he is the one to give information out.

Well, thats Steve Jobs problem. He has a serious issue if he has to be the one to state good news every single time, and try to take all the credit for it. Why can't Sun get credit for their accomplishment?

The important thing is who is going to suffer from this decision, and the most likely person will be Apple users, stuck with HFS+ for at least another year. I don't get why Steve Jobs needs to one to state all news, regardless of who else it affects. Cingular usually announces when they are introducing a new phone, etc, stuff like that.

Usually when one company or person accomplished something, they don't always have to let someone else announce it and try to take all the credit for it.

Edited 2007-06-12 20:53

Kind of like Al Gore's internet claims he made years ago... LOL.

It seems Steve Jobs has a problem with being honest at times.

Anyway I was hoping ZFS would be in Leopard. I've been holding off on buying a Mac because of Leopard. Hopefully the new iMacs will be a major improvement over the current lot.

You know this has been debunked, right?

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp

> Yeah...Mr. Schwartz shouldn't have said anything. Steve Jobs likes it when he is the one to give information out.


Nobody scoops THE Steve

Edited 2007-06-12 21:35

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Nobody scoops THE Steve
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Is that the official 4Front Technologies position on the matter?

I only ask because you post as 4front, with a home page listed as http://www.opensound.com

So he can't be human and make a joke?

I don't know if HFS+ is the problem, or the lack of good file system utilities.

I have personally helped many customers who needed DiskWarrior to recover from HFS+ problems (When recoverable).

Having ZFS in Leopard would have been the most valuable new feature to me.

HFS and HFS+ is an very unstable and error prone filesystem compared to many others.

Just look at how easy it is to totally mess up the filesystem if the computer OS crasches.

Even when using their journaling system it is not that good.


The very good thing about HFS+ is that it is an quite speedy FS.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/06/11/eas_new_mac_games_wil...

Don't underestimate EA.

You mean don't overestimate EA?

i'm talking about the fact that ea's games will use cider and won't be native ports. i thought it was kinda disappointing.

I hope ZFS support will not be like UFS "support" in Tiger and its predecessors. While UFS was "supported", many applications just failed to install or run correctly due to the way HFS+ is required for handling the resource forks.

"I hope ZFS support will not be like UFS "support" in Tiger and its predecessors."

I think it will be so in Leopard.
Maybe in Mac OS X 10.6 "Next Big Cat" things will change.
Anyway, I have a little thing to say to Schwartz:
SHUT UP NEXT TIME, WTF!!!

If Jobs wants to cut his nose off to spite his face so what. Sun developed the worlds best filesystem with their own engineering talent, made it available via an OSS license, even assisted Apple port it and somehow Schwartz is at fault?

Assuming Jobs really was childish enough to pull the biggest feature of Leopard I don't see how this harms Sun. Seems like everyone is talking about Sun's ZFS despite the fact their was not mention of it in the keynote. All Jobs has accomplished is denying his customers a superior filesystem and making himself appear to have the maturity of an adolescent. No offense to any mature teens out there.

Actually, you give Schmidt too much credit. Jobs doesn't determine when a filesystem is ready to for primetime. Bertrand would be the one to determine with his team whether it's ready to take over as the filesystem of choice.

No one has bothered to do an Engineering Feasibility study on the state of ZFS and how it would integrate with the way OS X Leopard interacts from the kernel to the Window Server.

All else is nothing but a bunch of bitchy hens gossiping.

"and somehow Schwartz is at fault? "

Yeah, how could it *possible* be his own fault for talking out of is ass and making claims that aren't true?

A filesystem isn't something you can just yank out of the OS at a whim. If they were planning on supporting ZFS, the code should already be in place.

However, I'm not getting my hopes up. I've wanted to use UFS natively instead of HFS+ since Jaguar. I mean, a filesystem that doesn't have capitalization (!!). However, my efforts have always been thwarted since UFS apparently doesn't handle resource forks in the same way as HFS+. While most applications would work, there are a significant number that fail.

The impression I get is that HFS+ is so ingrained into OS X that if ZFS is truly supported, it will be no small feat to have this feature pulled. It is way more likely that Schwartz just got over excited when he heard that ZFS was going to be "supported".

>....cut his nose off to spite...
No, that is wrongly quoted: should be, "cut his nose off despite his face".. i.e. "even though it would make his face look bad".

Anyway, I have a little thing to say to Schwartz:
SHUT UP NEXT TIME, WTF!!!

What exactly would Schwartz and/or Sun win by following your advice of "SHUT UP NEXT TIME, WTF!!!" The whole industry doesn't revolve around stroking Steve's ego you know.

"What exactly would Schwartz and/or Sun win by following your advice of "SHUT UP NEXT TIME, WTF!!!"

Avoid making embarrassing and incorrect statements to the press?

Direct source: http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml;?articleID=19...

(PS: Called!)

To the first point, bootable ZFS has been in OpenSolaris/Nevada since around snv_62 or so, though I believe there're currently some restrictions on how complex a setup the root pool can have (Edit: by the looks of it, the main restriction at the moment is that the root pool cannot be using RAIDZ in either parity configuration. Mirroring is allowed however). What isn't there yet, but is almost ready, is support for it in Solaris's installer. This isn't currently available in a released version of Solaris Express, but should be soon. As for quotas, in ZFS those are implemented as a filesystem attribute, which is to say they can indeed be done by simply making each user's home dir its own filesystem in the pool and then setting the quota on that. This also has the advantage of letting you set attributes such as compression, encryption (once that's ready) and ditto copies of files on a per user basis.

Edited 2007-06-12 21:38 UTC

Why would Apple release ZFS for OS X Leopard when Solaris has still got to work out some kinks, not to mention ZFS has to satisfy the needs Apple has for their operating system and how it interacts with a filesystem?

Apple has dtrace yet dtrace was well-QA'd before Apple ported it.

ZFS works just fine, the caveat is simply that until recently it couldn't be used as the filesystem for the boot partition. The problem with using any FS as the boot filesystem is that your boot loader has to have enough intelligence to be able to parse the filesystem in order to find and load the kernel. With ZFS this becomes quite tricky since the blocks that comprise the kernel may well be distributed across several disks in a pool. Consequently the loader has to not only be able to parse the block tree on the primary disk, it must also be able to parse the pool configuration and reconstruct the pool from all the other disks that comprise it before it can even attempt to locate the kernel. This is especially tricky when considering that on a conventional x86 machine this essentially means you have to replicate a good chunk of ZFS's code without all the nice services the kernel gives you. This may actually be easier for Apple since their x86 systems use EFI only, which could possibly be easier to write a ZFS loader in (disclaimer: I am speculating here since I don't know EFI in great detail at this point). So it would be possible for Apple to beat Sun to the punch on boot support in theory.

Edited 2007-06-13 04:53 UTC

I see..
Thanks for the info.

There could be some truth to this suggestion; AFAIK ZFS isn't bootable in FreeBSD yet either, so maybe they haven't been able to add boot support to OS X in time for the October release (I imagine they've already hit feature freeze in Leopard).

So, a smallish HFS+Journalled for boot/swap, and the rest ZFS for great justice. ;-)

I swear, my love of hard drives and filesystems is purely Platonic.

- chrish

"Windows XP Background Snapshot Utility"

Where is this entity? I have not been able to find it on any of the 100 or so XP boxes at work, or on google either.

Perhaps you are talking about Volume Shadow Copy? That uses very little resources, and was built from scratch.

Maybe you meant System Restore? That does not take disk snapshots, it takes system state snapshots and does not touch user data, and only uses disk space, that is configurable.

hmmmm...I can't figure out what you are referencing.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't this a DEVELOPERS conference? ZFS is rather interesting to developers from what I've seen, not necessarily as much to users, but this would make a whole lot more sense then mentioning a new Finder look, at that point in time. Of course its Steve Jobs, so then again, what am I saying... its actually a "Development conference", showing off the latest new features of OS X only for end users.