Could Apple License or Buy ZFS from Oracle?

[GWestphal]

How much would it cost to buy ZFS from Oracle? Or at least license it. Doesn't Apple have a gigantic cash reserve in Braeburn hedge fund? Or is ZFS for the masses a lost cause since Oracle acquired it?

 

[Kaido]

No point.

#1 - they don't care about servers anymore. They dropped the Xserve. No interest in the business market whatsoever at the moment.

#2 - they do lip service to Pros, but they don't really care about Pros anymore. The release of what I'll call a beta of Final Cut Pro X was a joke, and the new Mac Pro looks awesome, but is kind of ridiculous for real-world use. That's a whole different discussion in & of itself.

#3 - so many local storage devices already exist. A 4TB USB 3.0 drive is under $199 these days and even that is overkill for the majority of consumer users. There are Drobos and other RAID-style enclosures available. A Thunderbolt port comes on new Macs to access high-speed data. It's hard to justify ZFS when you can get 20TB RAID in a little box on your desktop. For example, Pegasus has really nice Thunderbolt enclosures; their 6-bay drive can hold 24-terabytes of raw capacity and you can daisy-chain up to 6 enclosures for a total of 36 drives or a current max of 144-terabytes raw:

http://www2.promise.com/media_bank/Web Public Media/solution_for_mac/connectivies.jpg

#4 - most people who want a lot of storage just go with a NAS, so something like a Drobo or home file server. FreeNAS supports ZFS. Even Oracle has a ZFS storage appliances available, so why re-invent the wheel for a market that probably not even 1% of the Mac marketshare users would use?

http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/oracle-new-zfs-storage-126728

I think ZFS is a great idea and I've messed around with it at home, but without proper support it's kind of pointless. Plus, drives are so big these days, there's just a limited market appeal for having the ability to throw a bunch of older drives into a ZFS RAID-style pool at home. I'd love it if they supported it, but it's just never going to happen unless they want to re-enter the pro market in a big way, and there are just too many accessible players who already exist in that market. Even Apple uses HP & Teradata & other third-party gear in their own server rooms:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/09/apple_maiden_data_center/

 

[GWestphal]

I think the data integrity aspect alone should enough to get it to become the de facto filesystem for all PCs. Especially with larger drives since you're more likely to hit those intrinsic error rates.

 

[bearxor]

It was originally scheduled to be in 10.6 server but some new features that were had wired to HFS came on for 10.7 and it was shelved. I suspect it will happen at some point, but probably another two OS versions away (two past Mavericks).

 

[metril]

I doubt that Apple will ever smarten up and "upgrade" their filesystem. Microsoft got smart and made ReFS (though slow adoption). Linux has a ZFS package. But Apple, still fails to understand bit rot and block level file integrity.

 

[Kaido]

I think the data integrity aspect alone should enough to get it to become the de facto filesystem for all PCs. Especially with larger drives since you're more likely to hit those intrinsic error rates.

I don't disagree, but everything is coming with a single drive these days. Look at Apple's current computer lineup:

1. Macbook Air
2. Macbook Pro Retina
3. Mac Mini
4. iMac
5. Mac Pro

At best, you get an iMac with a Fusion drive (SSD + HDD) or a dual-drive Mac Mini Server. But the laptops use those skinny SSD Flash sticks (Airs & Retinas), and even the new Mac Pro uses SSD Flash stick storage (what looks to be a beefed-up Retina SSD stick), so really the only good option is external storage via USB, Firewire, or Thunderbolt, which goes back to the existing RAID-box options.

As far as data integrity, if an internal drive fails your choices are to either have Apple service it (typically a single, integrated drive), or go the DIY route (expensive & difficult on most modern Mac computers). The easiest one to work on is the Mac Mini, and even that isn't a walk in the park. So definitely do an external backup for Time Machine, or even better, a scheduled SuperDuper clone, as well as a cloud service such as Backblaze.

Again don't get me wrong, I'd love for them to offer ZFS support, but based on their currently lineup & lack of support for Servers/Businesses/Professionals, it just doesn't seem in the cards. Plus, the big benefit of ZFS is on multi-drive arrays, because even if you cut your single drive in half or thirds to provide on-disk redundancy with ZFS, if that single drive fails physically, you're still screwed. So the only good option would be to go with an external boot drive, which is pointless on laptops and kind of defeats the purpose of having an all-in-one iMac or tiny Mac Mini. Ars has a pretty good article on the demand for ZFS in OSX 10.9:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/02/zfs-loving-mac-users-demand-support-in-os-x-10-9/

However, the online petition asking Apple for ZFS support has less than 4,000 signatures. In contrast, this past June they announced that 35% of Mac users have upgraded to Mountain Lion, which amounts to 28 million copies sold. So less than 4,000 ZFS requests vs. roughly 80 million Mac users:

http://blog.laptopmag.com/apple-mountain-lion-adoption-windows-8

Maybe we'll see ZFS if Apple decides to upgrade from HFS+, but I doubt that will happen for awhile. I keep wondering if/when Apple is going to switch from Intel to ARM-based processors so they can get more control over their system. Like bearxor, it may come at some point, but most likely not anytime soon because they would have had beta tests available for Mavericks.

 

[Kaido]

I doubt that Apple will ever smarten up and "upgrade" their filesystem. Microsoft got smart and made ReFS (though slow adoption). Linux has a ZFS package. But Apple, still fails to understand bit rot and block level file integrity.

True from a technical standpoint, but really, when's the last time you ever heard of a Mac user (or Windows user, for that matter) experiencing bitrot-related issues? It's just not that common, to the point of affecting people's computers, so it doesn't get a lot of attention. Again, not saying I wouldn't love to go ZFS (or something newer than HFS+), but I doubt we'll see it within in the next release or two of OSX.

Although I am curious to see the longevity of SSD's...I've successfully retrieved data from really old hard drives and even (luckily) stuff from 5.25" floppy drives, but SSD's are a different animal. Typically when they die, they die - unlike hard drives, which often slowly fail and still let you get the data off before dying completely. I've had SSD's die in laptops in the middle of management meetings, with the drive being completely unrecoverable in a USB dock, whereas most of the time, I can still get a HDD spinning (sometimes with the freezer trick) and get the data off or make an image clone of the drive.

And that gets more complicated because most laptop users don't do regular local backups or clones, and not everybody saves their data to the network file server, so it can become a huge hassle. I've seen people have meltdowns at the Apple Store because their laptop hard drive failed and they lost everything, but "Apple's are supposed to be the best computers, this isn't supposed to happen!" 🙄

 

[Kaido]

How much would it cost to buy ZFS from Oracle? Or at least license it. Doesn't Apple have a gigantic cash reserve in Braeburn hedge fund? Or is ZFS for the masses a lost cause since Oracle acquired it?

Also, have you given Zevo a try? (ZFS for Mac)

http://getgreenbytes.com/solutions/zevo/

It's command-line only and has some limitations, but give that a shot if you want to play around!

 

[GWestphal]

I haven't tried zevo yet. I wasn't sure how complete it was. I might look at one of the NAS implementations though and build a little box for it specifically.

 

[Kaido]

I haven't tried zevo yet. I wasn't sure how complete it was. I might look at one of the NAS implementations though and build a little box for it specifically.

I would highly recommend FreeNAS:

http://web.freenas.org/for-home/

I've had a SoftRAID-5 box running for ages now. I'd upgrade to ZFS in the latest FreeNAS version, but it's never crashed once, so no need! Haha.

 

[GWestphal]

how big is your raid?

 

[Kaido]

how big is your raid?

Ancient...4 x 750GB in Software RAID 5 for 2TB usable.

 

[grahamperrin]

… is ZFS for the masses a lost cause since Oracle acquired it?

No, it's not a lost cause.

Before ZEVO was acquired by GreenBytes, there was a tremendous amount of work to make ZFS as close as possible a fit with the needs of everyday users of Apple's OS.

Development at GreenBytes continued, for a while, with less consumer focus. GreenBytes began seeking a new home for ZEVO, then announced that there'll be an update for Mavericks, OS X 10.9.

How much would it cost to buy ZFS from Oracle? Or at least license it …

I have no idea, sorry.

… #1 - they don't care about servers …

That's not entirely true, but that's a separate topic.

More generally, Apple does care about integrity of data.

I think ZFS is a great idea … proper support …

Since I began testing Mavericks I have seen enough to make me suspect that there's to be support for an additional type of file system (or storage system); and/or simplified use of disks where support for a particular file system is not (or not yet) integral to the OS. However, no hint of what the system(s) may be.

The natural coming together of communities under OpenZFS should, to a degree, ease concerns about support.

… probably another two OS versions away (two past Mavericks).

I guess: 10.10 at the latest.

… everything is coming with a single drive …

This is heresy to some, but it's possible to benefit from ZFS without redundancy of data. I use ZEVO with a MacBookPro5,2 with only one drive, an sshd. Simply understand two things: the need for backups (that need is not specific to ZFS); and that if an error is found, there'll be no automatic repair – so restore the affected file from a backup.

Assurance of integrity of data. And if an error occurs, knowledge of that error.

Compared to the no-knowledge mindset that's allowed with HFS Plus, those things are huge wins.

… when's the last time you ever heard of a Mac user (or Windows user, for that matter) experiencing bitrot-related issues? …

Quoting from http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/1ndjl9/get_zfs_on_your_os_x_with_openzfs/ccjegee

We rarely find complaints because nothing in OS X – as we currently know the OS – is capable of detecting data corruption.

Simply: corruption occurs. No hard disk, sshd or flash drive is everlasting. Effects of corruption may range from negligible to show-stopping but users of HFS Plus will almost never realise that the effect is due to corruption. Only when one begins to use ZFS does one realise the situations in which corruption may occur.