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Back in January, we reported on ZEVO, an effort by former Apple file system engineer Don Brady to finally bring the Sun-backed ZFS file system to OS X. Brady's company, Ten's Complement, had begun releasing a set of software packages to support the robust file system on OS X, but planned launches for the some of the more advanced packages had begun to slip in recent months.
As noted by TUAW, Brady has now announced that ZEVO has been acquired by GreenBytes a storage appliance hardware company that already uses ZFS in its products. Brady will also be joining GreenBytes as a development engineer.
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."
A blog post from GreenBytes expresses a similar sentiment, although it remains unclear exactly what the company's plans for ZFS on OS X will be, with some ZFS fans having expressed concern that GreenBytes will be refocusing the product for its own internal needs.
GreenBytes has been an enthusiastic supporter of ZFS (including ZFS on OS X) for many years and is absolutely committed to the continued development and support of Don's work on ZEVO (ZFS on OS X) into the foreseeable future.
With the transfer of ZEVO to GreenBytes, Ten's Complement has ceased sales of the Silver Edition software package that had been available, and it remains unclear how and when ZEVO will be redeployed for OS X by GreenBytes.
Top Rated Comments
Bingo.
ZFS is overkill for a company (Apple) and is decidedly consumer and mobile.
The filesystem should be a priority even for these sectors. It's what we store our precious data on for Pete's sake. We need a modern day filesystem. Snapshots and copy-on-write sound very cool to me:)
(2) What does a Mac user with one internal disk drive have to gain?
On single disk ?- Snapshotting
- Copy on write
- Data integrity
- Encryption (built-in rather than filevault type after thought)
- Quotas
ZFS is much more than just a HFS+ replacement, it's a volume and storage pool management suite, not just a filesystem.
I heard a lot about ZFS over the years. What I never hear is what ZFS does that will benefit me, as a Mac user. Until I hear that, I won't care.
RAID like features built into the fs
Fights corruption by using checksums
Snapshots
dedupe
Pooled Storage
ZFS Cache (L2ARC)
Copy on Write (CoW)
Dynamic striping
Most of these features are pretty much Enterprise level. Apple could deliver a lighter weight more consumer friendly version more tuned to consumer needs.
The problem with ZFS on Mac OS X is (1) How to present a full featured ZFS system to a typical Mac user in a way that he can understand the concepts and options. (2) What does a Mac user with one internal disk drive have to gain?
Theeeen SunSystems went the way of the dodo, and mobile devices/iOS became Apple's main priority in 2007+.
ZFS would be fantastic, as many have stated, for single and multi-arrays. As well, it handles large [single] volumes much better, which would benefit "Time Machine" and large data backup(s).
HFS+ is long in the tooth.