OpenZFS Committed To Improving Open-Source ZFS

Last month I wrote about the launch of OpenZFS as an initiative to organize the various open-source ZFS file-system projects around Linux, BSD, OS X, and other platforms. OpenZFS is an umbrella project now for all the different ZFS implementations since the code became available during the Sun Microsystems glory days.

OpenZFS was talked about at last month's LinuxCon event and the PDF slides are now available. Among the interesting points include:

- Porting ZFS to Linux had difficulties involving 8k stcks, GCC with ZFS being written against C99 rather than C89, GPL-only symbols to workaround, user-space differencies, and memory management differences between Solaris and Linux.

- Future work for the Linux port of the open-source ZFS includes supporting O_DIRECT, asynchronous IO, POSIX ACLs, reflink, filefrag, faloocate, TRIM, FMA infrastructure event daemon, multiple modified protection, and large blocks.

- ZFS On Linux is considered stable and production ready, the performance is comparable to existing Linux file-systems, and all major ZFS features are supported. ZFS On Linux is reportedly used within desktops, NAS devices, and even super-computers.

More details for the OpenZFS project can be found at Open-ZFS.org or the linked slides above.