> NOTHING anton listed takes the place of ZFS That's not surprising, since I didn't list any file systems.
Here's a few file systems, and some of their distinguishing features. None of them do exactly what ZFS does. ZFS doesn't do what they do, either. QFS: Very, very fast. Supports segregation of data from metadata, and classes of data. Supports SAN access to data. XFS: Also fast; works efficiently on multiprocessors (in part because allocation can proceed in parallel). Supports SAN access to data (CXFS). Delayed allocation allows temporary files to stay in memory and never even be written to disk (and improves contiguity of data on disk). JFS: Another very solid journaled file system. GPFS: Yet another SAN file system, with tighter semantics than QFS or XFS; highly reliable. StorNext: Hey, it's another SAN file system! Guaranteed I/O rates (hmmm, which XFS has too, at least on Irix) -- a key for video use. SAMFS: Integrated archiving -- got petabytes of data that you need virtually online? SAM's your man! (well, at least your file system) AdvFS: A journaled file system with snapshots, integrated volume management, online defragmentation, etc. VxFS: Everybody knows, right? Journaling, snapshots (including writable snapshots), highly tuned features for databases, block-level change tracking for more efficient backups, etc. There are many, many different needs. There's a reason why there is no "one true file system." -- Anton > Better yet, you get back to writing that file system > that's going to fix all these horrible deficiencies > in zfs. Ever heard of RMS? A file system which supports not only sequential access to files, or random access, but keyed access. (e.g. "update the record whose key is 123")? A file system which allowed any program to read any file, without needing to know about its internal format? (so such an indexed file could just be read as a sequence of ordered records by applications which processed ordinary text files.) A file system which could be shared between two, or even more, running operating systems, with direct access from each system to the disks. A file system with features like access control with alarms, MAC security on a per-file basis, multiple file versions, automatic deletion of temporary files, verify-after-write. You probably wouldn't be interested; but others would. It solves a particular set of needs (primarily in the enterprise market). It did it very well. It did it some 30 years before ZFS. It's very much worthwhile listening to those who built such a system, and their experiences, if your goal is to learn about file systems. Even if they don't suffer fools gladly. ==== If you've got a problem for which ZFS is the best solution, great. Use it. But don't think that it solves every problem, nor that it's perfect for everyone -- even you. (One particular area to think about -- how do you back up your multi-terabyte pool? And how do you restore an individual file from your backups?) This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
