For those of you that get your kicks from file system tech, you might want to check out some recent news from the nice folks at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. As a part of helping to further augment the Lustre file system with ZFS support, the Livermore team is helping to perform a native Linux ZFS port. Linux currently has a ZFS port via FUSE due to the inherent licensing issues with Sun/Oracle and ZFS. There are currently too many issues between the CDDL and GPL to make ZFS a part of the Linux kernel.
Currently in the ZFS for Linux port the only interface available from user space is the zvol,” the project’s website reads, “The zvol allows you to create a virtual block device dataset in a zfs storage pool. While this may not immediately seem like a big deal it does open up some interesting possibilities.”
The port comes in the form of a kernel module in order to circumvent certain license issues, but its not quite 100% complete. They team has yet to implement the POSIX I/O layer in the module, so mounting file systems via traditional methods is not yet possible. However, direct database access is functional.
Kudos to Brian Behlendorf and his team at Livermore for biting off a serious project. If you’re interested in more info, check out the project website here.
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