Developer(s) | Oracle Corporation |
---|---|
Full name | ZFS |
Introduced | November 2005 with OpenSolaris |
Structures | |
Directory contents | Extensible hash table |
Limits | |
Max. volume size | 256 quadrillion zebibytes (2128 bytes) |
Max. file size | 16 exbibytes (264 bytes) |
Max. number of files |
|
Max. filename length | 255 ASCII characters (fewer for multibyte character encodings such as Unicode) |
Features | |
Forks | Yes (called "extended attributes", but they are full-fledged streams) |
Attributes | POSIX |
File system permissions | POSIX, NFSv4 ACLs |
Transparent compression | Yes |
Transparent encryption | Yes |
Data deduplication | Yes |
Copy-on-write | Yes |
Other | |
Supported operating systems | Solaris, OpenSolaris, illumos distributions, OpenIndiana, FreeBSD, Mac OS X Server 10.5 (only read-only support), NetBSD, Linux via third-party kernel module or ZFS-FUSE, OSv) |
ZFS is a combined file system and logical volume manager designed by Sun Microsystems. The features of ZFS include protection against data corruption, support for high storage capacities, efficient data compression, integration of the concepts of filesystem and volume management, snapshots and copy-on-write clones, continuous integrity checking and automatic repair, RAID-Z and native NFSv4 ACLs.
The ZFS name is registered as a trademark of Oracle Corporation. The ZFS name originally stood for "Zettabyte File System". Originally, ZFS was proprietary, closed-source software developed internally by Sun as part of Solaris, with a team led by the CTO of Sun's storage business unit and Sun Fellow, Jeff Bonwick. In 2005, the bulk of Solaris, including ZFS, was licensed as open-source software under the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL), as the OpenSolaris project. ZFS became a standard feature of Solaris 10 in June 2006.
In 2010, Oracle stopped the releasing of source code for new OpenSolaris and ZFS development, effectively forking their closed-source development from the open-source branch. In response, OpenZFS was created as a new open-source development umbrella project, aiming at bringing together individuals and companies that use the ZFS filesystem in an open-source manner.