06-06-2007, 02:32 PM

Article

Not sure if this should go in this forum or in the OS X Operating System forum, but here it is! This one feature alone is enough to make me upgrade to 10.5. I can't tell you how excited I am by this! ZFS has virtually unlimited capacity support (16 exabytes per storage pool, file system, file, or file attribute) and many awesome features in terms of RAID, storage management, etc. My only question is what Apple will do with their desktops - ZFS is best implemented in a multi-drive environment. There are rumors that the Mac Mini and 17" iMac are going to be killed off, so maybe a Mac Pro "Lite" tower or dual-drive iMac?

Perhaps overcome with excitement (and forgetting that Apple doesn't like such pre-emptive disclosures), Sun's Jonathan Schwartz announced today at Sun event in Washington D.C. that Apple would be making ZFS "the file system" in Mac OS 10.5 Leopard (video link, requires RealPlayer).

In fact, this week you'll see that Apple is announcing at their Worldwide Developer Conference that ZFS has become the file system in Mac OS 10.

Rumors of Apple's interest in ZFS began in April 2006, when an OpenSolaris mailing list revealed that Apple had contacted Sun regarding porting ZFS to OS 10. The file system later began making appearances in Leopard builds.

ZFS has a long list of improvements over Apple's current file system, Journaled HFS+. More information on ZFS is available at the ZFS homepage and Wikipedia.

06-06-2007, 04:27 PM

ZFS can be used with external back up drives as well, so I don't think Apple is going to drop their most popular desktop machine, the 17" iMac.

It's probably good for Time Machine, and Time Machine is only worth it if you have an ext. HD.

06-07-2007, 08:46 AM

ZFS sounds good. Does anyone know if it will be possible to wipe your current OS X 10.4 install with it's current HFS+ file system and install the new OS X 10.5 with ZFS?

I know that this is in the future but does anyone have an opinion by going by past experiences with Apple and their File System upgrades?

06-07-2007, 09:51 AM

Originally Posted by amardilo

ZFS sounds good. Does anyone know if it will be possible to wipe your current OS X 10.4 install with it's current HFS+ file system and install the new OS X 10.5 with ZFS?

I know that this is in the future but does anyone have an opinion by going by past experiences with Apple and their File System upgrades?

As far as I know, installing a new file system requires a complete wipe - you would need to backup all of your files and programs before installing 10.5. Assuming ZFS is the new default, we'll learn more at WWDC next week

06-07-2007, 10:08 AM

No updating requires a wipe, not even installing OS X on a computer that can run it and that is running only OS 9.

I'd be surprised if this changes for 10.5.

06-07-2007, 10:13 AM

Originally Posted by Brown Study

No updating requires a wipe, not even installing OS X on a computer that can run it and that is running only OS 9.

I'd be surprised if this changes for 10.5.

I was only referring to installing a new file system. I would assume that going from HFS+ to ZFS is like going from FAT32 to NTFS...requires you to reformat your hard drive and then install your operating system again.

06-07-2007, 10:27 AM

This no-Mac-mentioned story on Sun's site says that:

Sun continues to support the UFS file system.

If Apple switches, it might support HFS, too.

Please, God, no more emulators.

Edit: By support, I mean ZFS by itself, not Sun or Apple support.

06-07-2007, 08:44 PM

i tried to read up on this filing system and was dumbfounded. i have no idea what the benefits are to it.

06-07-2007, 10:03 PM

Originally Posted by acash0902

i have no idea what the benefits are to it.

I don't understand much of it, either. But it's fun to think about.

The last time a company pre-empted a Jobs announcement it was Adobe, wasn't it? And soon after, Jobs anounced Aperture.

Then IDG Books moved its computer exposition to Boston from New York, or the other way around. Jobs pulled out, if I remember correctly, and banned IDG's books from the Apple website.

So if Sun's CEO ignored history for the sake of making a splash announcement, maybe Jobs is rewriting his speech to announce that Apple bought Sun just to fire him.

This story says:

ZFS is afilesystem developed by Sun that is 128-bit, meaning it offers 16 billion billion times the capacity of 32- or 64-bit systems -- virtually unlimited by today's standards. ZFS also offers increased performance because it is transactional object model rather than more traditional I/O mechanisms.

Another purported benefit of ZFS is the elimination of various administration and maintenance routines required by other filesystems. For instance, the fsck command never has to be run, even if the system is shut down in an unclean fashion -- the creators claim that ZFS has never lost data integrity or leaked a single block after thousands of forced violent crashes.

The story from a link in a previous post makes it sound like ZFS is the JavaScript of OSes. It doesn't care whether a system is little endian or big endian.

Maybe ZFS could have eliminated the app mess brought on by the switch to Intel. For that matter, maybe it could have eliminated the mess when Apple switched to OS X. But more to the point, ZFS might allow Windows apps to run natively on Leopard.

On the other hand, if every app has to be rewritten yet again, there'd be blood on the streets of Cupertino. There might be, anyway, if ZFS means all those rewrites are moot.

06-07-2007, 10:26 PM

I don't remember where exactly but I saw a demo on the web about ZFS and the features and usability look pretty slick from a geeky standpoint. It was all done in CLI and most of the neat stuff that it showed would be useful for admins and uber geeks with huge home networks. On the other hand it looks very easy to use which would fit nicely with Apple.

06-07-2007, 10:32 PM

Hello, here is a nice little demo straight from sun.

http://www.opensolaris.org/os/commun.../demos/basics/

06-08-2007, 08:17 AM

Originally Posted by kaidomac

As far as I know, installing a new file system requires a complete wipe - you would need to backup all of your files and programs before installing 10.5. Assuming ZFS is the new default, we'll learn more at WWDC next week

Thanks for the info. I have no problem doing a wipe as long as it's easy. I just don't want it to be as difficult as it was for me to switch from FAT32 to NTFS (that one took ages and wasted a good part of a day and several attempts to format the drive and to get my file sizes correct).

06-08-2007, 08:27 AM

Originally Posted by kaidomac

I was only referring to installing a new file system. I would assume that going from HFS+ to ZFS is like going from FAT32 to NTFS...requires you to reformat your hard drive and then install your operating system again.

Going from FAT32 to NTFS doesn't require a wipe (the command is 'convert c: /ntfs'). Going from NTFS to FAT32 can also be done, but you'll need a third party program like Partition Magic.

Likewise, I can't see why Apple couldn't just write a conversion utility.

06-08-2007, 11:23 AM

Originally Posted by cwa107

Going from FAT32 to NTFS doesn't require a wipe (the command is 'convert c: /ntfs'). Going from NTFS to FAT32 can also be done, but you'll need a third party program like Partition Magic.

Likewise, I can't see why Apple couldn't just write a conversion utility.

Interesting, I was under the impression that it always required a re-format to get there. Good to know, thanks!

06-12-2007, 01:55 PM

Update: Apple says "No" to ZFS in Leopard...

http://www.macdailynews.com/index.ph..._os_x_leopard/