Zettabyte File System (ZFS)

 

Zettabyte File System (ZFS)

What Is ZFS File System?

ZFS file system, previously known as zettabyte file system, is a kind of file system with a volume manager. It began as part of the Sun Microsystems Solaris operating system (OS) in 2001. Large parts of Solaris OS including ZFS were released under an open-source license as OpenSolaris for about 5 years since 2005.

Zettabyte File System Advantages

There are two aspects for storage managing. One aspect refers to the physical volume management of one or multiple block storage devices like hard drives and their organization into logical block devices as seen by the OS, which usually involves a volume manager, suitable device driver, RAID controller, or array manager. The other aspect means the management of files saved on those logical block devices, a file system, or other data storage.

Be different from other storage systems, ZFS is unusual for it unifies both of the roles and plays as both the volume manager and the file system. Thus, the ZFS file system has complete knowledge of both the physical disks and volumes, including their condition/status and logical arrangement into volumes, as well as all the files stored on them.

The ZFS file system is designed to make sure, subject to suitable hardware, that data stored on hard disks can’t be lost due to physical errors or wrong operations by the hardware or OS, or bit rot events and data corruption that may happen over time.