ZFS Port to Linux ( all versions)

[darshin]

As we all know, ZFS is by far the best file system.

People have workarounds and solutions which are kind of 2nd tone replacements to work on Linux, but either ways, all these solutions are not really good replacements as they either are not stable enough or lack some of the salient features of ZFS.

KQ has ported ZFS to Linux and was a much awaited release since January 2010.

We are releasing the closed beta in last week of August/first week of september and are looking for closed beta customers who can test it for free on some environments.

Feel free to put forward any questions as well.



Kind Regards,

Darshin

 

[time]

So I take it this is actually spam?

 

[darshin]

!!!! This is not spam buddy!

Iam very much alive n kicking and not spamming in the wildest dreams!

We are indeed up with the port on Linux for ZFS and am pretty excited about it cause a lot of inquiries, a lot of troubleshooting has actually led our file system engineers deliver something thats been on the top list of sysadmins/ storage admins for a long long time, using ZFS full fledged on top of Linux.

I am not spamming, we are seriously demo-ing the launch and are in the process of short listing potential beta customers who can help us test our product and give that TESTED and successfully running certificate to us to help us go full fledged in the market.

Regards,
Darshin

 

[timwhit]

You really only need to create one thread on this forum. Everyone already saw the first one you posted.

 

[Chewy509]

@Darshin, well posting the same thing twice in different sections of the forum could be considered spamming.

I personally would like you to answer 2 questions?

1. What version of ZFS? Is it the same version as shipped in OpenSolaris nv134b? or an earlier version? What about all the user space tools, including ZFS integration with GNOME? (TimeSlider).

2. How did you actually implement ZFS on Linux? Is it a kernel driver? If so, how did you get around the non-GPL compatible CDDL which all public ZFS code is licensed under?

(The same 2 questions I asked in response to your other post).

 

[darshin]

Ok. Actually, I want everyone to see it, what happens at times is that if someone just visits a particular sub category, he wont be aware of whats posted in the other one.

Will keep that in mind

Cheers,
Darshin

 

[darshin]

Regarding your questions Chewy, I ll get back to you with the right answers, need the guys who worked on ZFS port on linux to answer those. Give me sometime, its EOD here, actually past End of Day here in India, should be getting those answers for you in not more than 24 hrs.

Cheers,
Darshin

 

[time]

Heh, I wonder how long it will take him to google that?

 

[darshin]

@time, who in this world gives you an authority to even call us an elaborate scam. Do you even have the slightest of the ideas who we are and our credibility in the arena of file systems ! The owners of the company are veterans from Veritas, pioneers of cluster file system and have huge respect in their respective fields. Plus, our clients, due to the NDA policy, cant disclose them, but are the biggest storage product companies.

We are in the course of changing our website.

The mentoring program is for Indian students. You dont know how it works here in India and whats the culture, so better dont comment on working for nothing for six months.
Its been highly offensive of you to call a 100 people company a scam and is utterly intolerable.

Please, spending an hour on web and coming to a conclusion that we are an elaborate scam is kiddish and shows your level of maturity and thinking capabilities. I can easily make out that if you were a programmer, you would have a shitty logic. Sorry for being harsh and offensive @time, but you've asked for it.

I dont have anything against the rest of the members, but please before offensively terming us a scam, before hurting our image and posting such replies, be careful.

 

[darshin]

and FYI, have some logic for a single sec @time! ...you are making me laugh at your thin logic dude.

If we didnt have the answers, we would have been not here to ask people to beta test!

@time: DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHATS CLOSEd bETA??

Anyways, am not going to waste my time anymore replying to your mindless posts.

@ chewy, i ll be posting your reply in a pm to you dude.

 

[Stereodude]

What about the rest of us reading along at home looking forward to the answers?

 

[darshin]

ok. I will post the reply over here. Was furious with what one of the members on the forum posted.

Should reply soon.

 

[Handruin]

and FYI, have some logic for a single sec @time! ...you are making me laugh at your thin logic dude.

If we didnt have the answers, we would have been not here to ask people to beta test!

@time: DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHATS CLOSEd bETA??

Anyways, am not going to waste my time anymore replying to your mindless posts.

@ chewy, i ll be posting your reply in a pm to you dude.

This is actually your third post on the same subject, I already deleted one of them because it was duplicate information.

Darshin, you're actually attacking a very knowledgeable forum member and the way you're portraying yourself isn't looking very good for you and the 100-people company you work for. If you're their public representative, you certainly aren't winning anyone over on this forum. Chewy asked some pretty important questions about the implementation and you're unable to answer with your own knowledge. Rather than spending the time to get the information, you used it to fight with another forum member who really didn't do anything severe to deserve you being so furious.

 

[darshin]

This is actually your third post on the same subject, I already deleted one of them because it was duplicate information.

Darshin, you're actually attacking a very knowledgeable forum member and the way you're portraying yourself isn't looking very good for you and the 100-people company you work for. If you're their public representative, you certainly aren't winning anyone over on this forum. Chewy asked some pretty important questions about the implementation and you're unable to answer with your own knowledge. Rather than spending the time to get the information, you used it to fight with another forum member who really didn't do anything severe to deserve you being so furious.

I never had anything against Chewy nor have I questioned anyone else. I have not written anything against Chewy.

@ handruin, am not going to get into the debate or anything here. I didnt like someone calling us a Scam! Thats it. Anyways, I would be back with the answers on Chewy's questions and thats what am here for, answering genuine questions.

Regards,
Darshin

 

[Gilbo]

Everything about you smells like a scam Darshin.


1. You don't even know how your company solved massive copyright licensing issues that have frustrated people for years? When any reasonable individual in your position with half a dose of an education in filesystems or software development could anticipate that's the first question anyone would ask... You have to go to India for answer to that question. If that's true, tell your superiors to fire your sorry ass.

2. You spam every sub-forum on a small, close knit web forum.

3. You jump into a ridiculously over the top, hostile response to a knowledgeable, considerate forum member who has corresponded with most people on this website for years, which you finish with a thinly veiled threat.


P.S. ZFS source, ported to Linux, is already available for people who don't intend to distribute it. No closed betas. No people with bad English who fly off the handle at locals. A much nicer deal than you're offering, so far as I'm concerned.

 

[darshin]

The licensing concerns should not be problem because there is a precedence to this and Oracle is already aware of it. The port from LLNL is under US government grant and has been validated by their lawyers. Obviously at first sight it seems like there is problem with the CDDL/GPL issue but as is clearly demonstrated by the port by LLNL and validated by their lawyers porting it as a kernel module is not a problem.

see http://www.osnews.com/story/23416/Native_ZFS_Port_for_Linux

 

[Stinker]

Give darshin a break. I don't see time backing up any of his comments with anything concrete. I'd say HE should have shown some discretion (& done some homework) in the first place.

 

[Chewy509]

The licensing concerns should not be problem because there is a precedence to this and Oracle is already aware of it. The port from LLNL is under US government grant and has been validated by their lawyers. Obviously at first sight it seems like there is problem with the CDDL/GPL issue but as is clearly demonstrated by the port by LLNL and validated by their lawyers porting it as a kernel module is not a problem.

see http://www.osnews.com/story/23416/Native_ZFS_Port_for_Linux

Have you personally or someone from your company validated that with Oracle themselves? The source you indicated is nothing more than rumour, and not evidence that Oracle is fine with the situation. Their lawyers may be waiting for solid evidence of licence infringement before proceeding.

Does LLNL research grants and liability-cover extend to other 3rd parties such as yourself? (I wouldn't believe so, particularly due to International borders being involved and I don't know how the US works, but here liability cover only covers the immediate grant holder, not 3rd parties involved).

Reading the LLNL site for ZFS on Linux. The ZFS components build as a kernel driver/module, but due to licence restrictions, the resulting Linux Kernel and ZFS kernel module can NOT be redistributed. The end user is required to build their own kernel and matching ZFS kernel module. (Source: http://github.com/behlendorf/zfs/wiki/FAQ ). All LLNL provide is the source code and instructions.

How does what you are offering get around the issue of redistribution of binary code? (which I assume you are doing). Or do you also require the end user to self build a kernel and kernel module which any sane business model would not support?

Also you still haven't mentioned what version of ZFS you are implementing? And user-space integration tools? GNOME integration? etc.

Also how does your work relate with what LLNL are doing? It is shared research/development? Is someone copying technology/research/development from another source?

At the moment, all your comments just open up more questions... which for me just builds doubt in what you are offering.

PS. If someone want's ZFS why just run Solaris 10 (which is fully supported by Oracle), OpenSolaris, Solaris Express 11 or FreeBSD where they are implemented without licencing issues and have a support base to rely on? What you are proposing appears to be a high risk adventure with what you little information have presented.

If Linux was a requirement (and I don't know why - since user space applications matter more these days than just the kernel), then wouldn't BTRFS be the storage technology to look out for? If it hardware drivers - without being too pompous - select hardware off the Solaris HCL and be done with it. And if you truely know kernels, then what does the Linux kernel offer that the Solaris kernel does not? (I'm having trouble understanding the business case for this adventure).

There is a group that uses the OpenSolaris nv134b kernel with a complete GNU environment - no SYSV stuff anywhere - The Nexenta Project. ( http://www.nexenta.org/ ) if you really need a complete GNU environment? And it's supported! No hidden catches. And you get ZFS.

PPS. I currently run Solaris 10 as my main desktop OS (yes, I'm a masochist), but I have StarOffice 9, OpenOffice 3.2, Firefox, Thunderbird, Acrobat Reader, Flash 10.1, Java, nVidia drivers for graphics and all the applications I could hope for (including games). Could you please tell me what Linux has, that I don't have or have access to?

 

[Chewy509]

Give darshin a break. I don't see time backing up any of his comments with anything concrete. I'd say HE should have shown some discretion (& done some homework) in the first place.

I believe this is what Time was referring to: http://www.kqinfotech.com/mentoring

I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

 

[darshin]

I believe this is what Time was referring to: http://www.kqinfotech.com/mentoring

I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

Yup.

The mentoring program is for aspiring students.

Its based on the gurukul system.

In India, students pay tens of thousands of rupees to learn a particular technology and to master it, that too without working on live projects. You will come across a bunch of them spending so much money after graduation and then waiting for a job.

What we offer is that they dont have to pay us anything. We bear the expenses of the trainer, train them on the technologies listed over there and then these students are either given an offer to join the company as full time employee or they get into other big companies with a salary. We also give them the opportunity to work on live projects.

To understand the scenario, you need to be in India. Believe me, there are so many students who sit jobless at home for an year, paying money from their pocket to learn a technology.

Its similar to doing a masters, only that here you get hands on experience while learning and the difference is that we dont give a degree but we are not a scam in any case.

A scam would be asking money from students and then exploiting them! We do neither of these! I hope you get my point. I cant keep explaining in details, but i hope this gives an overview and brings this off track debate to an end!

 

[darshin]

1. What version of ZFS? Is it the same version as shipped in OpenSolaris nv134b? or an earlier version? What about all the user space tools, including ZFS integration with GNOME? (TimeSlider).

The current beta is based on the opensolaris build version b121. There is an existing linux native implementation of ZFS from Brian Behlendorf which is limited to the DMU layer. We have built the ZPL on top of this and provide all userland admin cmd like zfs and zpool. The beta supports zfs pool version is 18 which does not have the deduplication feature. We will rebase to the latest code in Behlendorf's port after our beta which will bring in this feature as well. ZFS integration with GNOME timeslider is not high on our priority list, we might consider it if we find significant interest or parties ready to fund this effort.


2. How did you actually implement ZFS on Linux? Is it a kernel driver? If so, how did you get around the non-GPL compatible CDDL which all public ZFS code is licensed under?

Our port implements the ZPL layer that is missing in Brian Behlendorf's port. Yes it is a linux kernel driver. The GPL- CDDL compatibility is not a problem if it is built as a kernel module.

http://groups.google.com/group/zfs-fuse/browse_thread/thread/32e1ac5f17641bf2?pli=1

 

[Chewy509]

Our port implements the ZPL layer that is missing in Brian Behlendorf's port. Yes it is a linux kernel driver. The GPL- CDDL compatibility is not a problem if it is built as a kernel module.

How so? Besides what LLNL has done do you have any other links / pointers to where using non-GPL binary kernel modules is ok? especially if your kernel module is CDDL? Wasn't it a few years ago that due to potential licence issues and a few binary-only kernel modules killing kernel stability that the Linux kernel term officially said the non-GPL kernel modules are NOT supported and in breach of the GPL as used for the Linux kernel?

From what I have read LLNL is able to do it as they are not distributing code or binary, just how-to information. (See my post above).

Are you doing the same as LLNL or are you distributing a binary kernel module?

Do you care to discuss the other concerns from my previous post above?

 

[Chewy509]

ZFS integration with GNOME timeslider is not high on our priority list, we might consider it if we find significant interest or parties ready to fund this effort.

I personally find this to be a killer feature for the home user. Enable snapshoting to occur once a day, keep enough snapshots of /home and you have automatic version control on all your documents and settings.

I was demonstrating OpenSolaris to a friend at work (he was a big Linux head), and showing him timeslider made him a convert of ZFS. It was only that feature that made him aware of the power of ZFS. He knew about the volume management, deduplication, RAID, multiple copies of files, CRC for each file, which he didn't feel was that important as snapshoting and using timeslider.

 

[Bozo]

ZFS News

 

[time]

I've been watching that forum closely since the original post. It's the only other forum that I can find where Darshin has actually engaged with people.

This despite the fact that Google shows he spammed as many as 100 sites (some canned his ass straight away).

He's been in direct contact with Phoronix after Michael expressed interest in being a beta tester. He was supposed to get something a few days ago, but it's now been postponed to mid-September.

The LLNL developer (whose work they are piggy-backing on) has also heard from KQ, but it appears that he hasn't seen anything yet either. Nonetheless, both he and Michael are taking the claims at face value.

The nature of the work seems to have changed: in October 2009 they said they were "porting ZFS to Linux" and had achieved some "primitive operations" such as "creating filesystems". Ten months later, they're apparently relying on the LLNL work instead and concentrating on the Posix layer. This is still a big achievement, but it would be nice if they could limit the scope of their claims.

I did find a piece of indirect evidence that KQ really has done some work on a ZFS port. But that's not the issue. The fact remains that Oracle owns ZFS (through patents and licensing limitations) and is highly unlikely to relinquish that (Sun wouldn't do it, Oracle is far less likely). That means it will never be incorporated into a Linux distribution and future support is an open question - not something that you want from a file system.

You need to ask yourself, what's in it for them? I think there's a clue in the volume of spam and the nature of the closed beta (which might conceivably end up being under an NDA?). They are explicitly looking for companies rather than consultants, and individuals not at all.

We won't know how to join the dots until something tangible happens. Doug, why isn't there a popcorn smiley?

 

[Chewy509]

To be honest, I doubt we'll hear from him again.

We just ask too many questions, and as you said, too many dots to connect to build a picture...

And far as I'm concerned, if you want ZFS run Solaris, OpenSolaris or FreeBSD. That way you get some support if something foobars up.

 

[Chewy509]

This just made Slashdot - Time for beer and popcorn... :beer:

http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/08/27/2259253

 

[ddrueding]

I would have expected a freeBSD zfs appliance by now. Anyone seen one?

 

[sechs]

I recall reading that the rewrite of FreeNAS is to have full ZFS support. That should make building something like that really easy, commercial or no.

Now, where that rewrite went is not clear....