Finally Windows may get a file system that adds features that have been around for years in Linux and Unix.
The state of the art in file system design could arguably be ZFS which is used in Solaris and a few other places.
Storage systems seem like very complex engineering systems. I wonder if Microsoft would have just been better off not reinventing the wheel and just licensing ZFS technology or something else? Just search for user horror stories regarding any of the storage improvements on Windows, from drive extender, encryption, WHS, etc.
And what ever happened to the object file system, the DB based file system?
Storage Spaces is somewhat like ZFS, although it has no deduplication and lacks other ZFS features. However, it is a start – and Microsoft will probably add features such as snapshots, replication, deduplication, and, maybe, compression. El Reg also thinks that there could be a Hyper-V virtualisation angle to this – and more is to come. — http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/07/windows_8_storage_spaces/page2.html
Update
Jan 17, 2012: Ah, so Microsoft is working Resilient File System (ReFS).
Microsoft mentioned all the important keywords when promoting ReFS with words like resilience, availability and the use of storage pools, something made popular by Sun’s – and now Oracle’s – ZFS.
Source: The Inquirer (http://s.tt/15gRk)
Further Reading
- Building the next generation file system for Windows: ReFS
- Virtualizing storage for scale, resiliency, and efficiency
- ZFS Storage Pools
- Windows 8 to get self-healing ‘Storage Spaces’, Microsoft’s next OS to sport ZFS features
- Microsoft reveals details on ReFS for Windows 8 Server
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