On Sun, Aug 3, 2008 at 9:31 AM, Rahul [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Can u site the differences b/w ZFS and FAT filesystems??
Assuming you are serious, the technical bits can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems
But there is a bigger, fundamental difference between ZFS and all other file
systems.
Firstly, ZFS does away with traditional disk partitioning and space
allocation principles. Many other volume managers claims to use storage
pools in some form or another, but ZFS truly realizes this.
To this effect, ZFS integrates volume management features to the POSIX
layer. Basically, when a read from an application fails, the kernel is
aware of the underlying bits which might save the day. In short, in stead
of panic-ing because data is corrupted, it can possibly re-try the operation
from a different disk, or even from a second copy on the same disk, etc.
What is more, it will FIX the problem there and then, in the background.
Example: Mirrored disks. One side of the mirror somehow fails the checksum
on the data. ZFS reads from the other mirror, and returns good data to the
application. But it goes further in that it fixes the bad data on the otehr
mirror copy.
Secondly, ZFS incorporates an amazing set of features: Online snapshots,
encryption, reservations, quotas, compression, turning on and off these and
several other features ONLINE.
Third, ZFS administration is easy. No need to modify files to set
mountpoins, share file systems, etc. The ZFS utilities will even turn on
the required services for you when you share a file system via SMB or NFS.
Lastly, ZFS's big claim to fame: Never get a corrupted file system. All
operations are transactionally completed when they are comitted. This is
done by means of three things: Copy-on-write for all changes, a
tree-structure to the underlying data and meta-data and space allocation,
and the ZIL - Eg the ZFS Intent Log. Going into these in depth are things
you can read on in many posts on http://blogs.sun.com
Hope this helps,
_J
___
zfs-discuss mailing list
zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org
http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
