Oracle Engineer Talks of ZFS File System Possibly Still Being Upstreamed On Linux (phoronix.com)

New submitter fstack writes: Senior software architect Mark Maybee who has been working at Oracle/Sun since '98 says maybe we "could" still see ZFS be a first-class upstream Linux file-system. He spoke at the annual OpenZFS Developer Summit about how Oracle's focus has shifted to the cloud and how they have reduced investment in Solaris. He admits that Linux rules the cloud. Among the Oracle engineer's hopes is that ZFS needs to become a "first class citizen in Linux," and to do so Oracle should port their ZFS code to Oracle Linux and then upstream the file-system to the Linux kernel, which would involve relicensing the ZFS code.

Comments

Having it NOT be in upstream is more flexible

[ZorinLynx]

One nice thing about ZFS not being in upstream is that it is currently maintained and updated separate from the Linux kernel.

Now, it would be nice to relicense ZFS under GPL so that it can be included in the kernel. But this should wait until the port is a bit more mature. Right now development is very active on ZFS and we have new versions coming out every few weeks; having to coordinate this with kernel releases will complicate things.

All this said, relicensing ZFS would definitely help Oracle redeem themselves a bit. After mercilessly slaughtering Sun after acquiring them, they have a long way to go to get from the "evil" side back to the forces of good.

Re:Having it NOT be in upstream is more flexible

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle is evil ... period. There is no going back.

Re:Having it NOT be in upstream is more flexible

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe this is Oracle's better nature or whatever; ZFS has to transition from Solaris to Linux because Solaris is dead.

It's really that simple. If Oracle can gin up a little excitement and maybe score some kudos then great, why not? But ultimately this has to happen or the official Oracle developed ZFS will die with its only official platform.

Re:Careful there

[dnaumov]

ZFS wants to live in a fairly specific configuration. It wants a bunch of drives, a bunch of memory, and not much competition for system resources.

Except for the part where it works with 2 drives, on a system with 4GB of RAM and under constant heavy load just fine.

Re:Not the best fit since it's schizophrenic

[UnknownSoldier]

> Because Linux normally lets you use your choice of file system on top of your choice of volume manager, on top of whichever RAID implementation you choose, with your choice of IO scheduling options, ZFS isn't exactly the best fit. ZFS mashes all those different things into one big blob. That's not really how Linux is designed.

Criticizing ZFS for "rampant layering violation" has been discussed to death before

"Dumb" API's, such as the ones implemented in Linux, have a STRICT layered approach like this:

* Volume Management
* File Management
* Block (RAID)

Problems start when each layer needs information at the layer above it. This is epitomized with the design flaw in hardware RAID via the write-hole. Link to English version

In contradistinction ZFS takes a holistic, unified approach:

* Volument Management <--> File Management <--> Block

e.g.
The original RAIDZ implementation was written in 599 lines of code in vdev_raidz.c -- less code equals less bugs.
https://github.com/illumos/ill...

> That's the same issue as systemd

No it doesn't. You are comparing apples to oranges. ZFS works because it intentionally "Flattened the stack" -- Yes, this runs counter to the layered Unix approach -- but sometimes that is NOT the best design decision.

Meanwhile Oracle keeps flailing about with Btrfs.