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dreadlocks

By dreadlocks,
in OS X Snow Leopard (10.6)

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dreadlocks
dreadlocks
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The only real thing that really interests me about Snow Leopard is inclusion of full ZFS support.. I am using the open source beta drivers in Leopard currently and have been impressed so far..

 

Here are the xbench results from my 1.5TB Seagate disks, HFS+ vs ZFS.. Now the numbers are to be taken with a grain of salt since ZFS does a bunch of magic to make these look much more impressive then they actually are... However I want everyone to note the massive improvments in RANDOM IO, this is going to be a godsend for Solid State Disks.

 

HFS+ RESULTS
  -------------
  Results	86.87	
   System Info		
	   Xbench Version		1.3
	   System Version		10.5.6 (9G55)
	   Physical RAM		4096 MB
	   Model		G31M-ES2L 
	   Drive Type		ST31500341AS ST31500341AS
   Disk Test	86.87	
	   Sequential	211.89	
		   Uncached Write	218.75	134.31 MB/sec [4K blocks]
		   Uncached Write	202.31	114.47 MB/sec [256K blocks]
		   Uncached Read	185.25	54.21 MB/sec [4K blocks]
		   Uncached Read	252.17	126.74 MB/sec [256K blocks]
	   Random	54.64	
		   Uncached Write	17.84	1.89 MB/sec [4K blocks]
		   Uncached Write	337.64	108.09 MB/sec [256K blocks]
		   Uncached Read	112.10	0.79 MB/sec [4K blocks]
		   Uncached Read	190.03	35.26 MB/sec [256K blocks]

  ZFS RESULTS
  --------------
  Results	289.91	
   System Info		
	   Xbench Version		1.3
	   System Version		10.5.6 (9G55)
	   Physical RAM		4096 MB
	   Model		G31M-ES2L 
   Disk Test	289.91	
	   Sequential	414.43	
		   Uncached Write	333.94	205.04 MB/sec [4K blocks]
		   Uncached Write	4492.29	2541.74 MB/sec [256K blocks]
		   Uncached Read	1479.63	433.02 MB/sec [4K blocks]
		   Uncached Read	173.64	87.27 MB/sec [256K blocks]
	   Random	222.93	
		   Uncached Write	65.96	6.98 MB/sec [4K blocks]
		   Uncached Write	7946.32	2543.91 MB/sec [256K blocks]
		   Uncached Read	607.38	4.30 MB/sec [4K blocks]
		   Uncached Read	989.75	183.66 MB/sec [256K blocks]

 

Now I havent formatted any of my SSD's as ZFS yet, I am using it for my boot drive currently so it remains HFS+.. (My other one is in my webserver and kicking butt with almost limitless read IO) Here are the results from it, note that it appears to be slower than the Seagtate disk but in real world testing I have found it to be much faster than the Seagate.. For examle when verifying a disk image off the SSD provides a constant 130MB/s read while the seagate fluxuates between 70MB/s and 230MB/s but on average it sticks arround 85MB/s and the verification process takes longer.. Booting off the SSD and suspending VM's to the SSD are magnitudes faster than the mechanical drive..

 

The important thing here is to see how bad the SSD chokes on Random Writes, this is a problem with all the SSD's I have played with. ZFS removes the randomness by queueing up random writes into sequential data blocks... I really hope Snow Leopard lets me format and boot off a ZFS file system. (can anyone confirm this?)

 

SSD HFS+
--------------
Results	81.84	
   System Info		
	   Xbench Version		1.3
	   System Version		10.5.6 (9G55)
	   Physical RAM		4096 MB
	   Model		G31M-ES2L 
	   Drive Type		OCZ SOLID_SSD OCZ SOLID_SSD
   Disk Test	81.84	
	   Sequential	112.45	
		   Uncached Write	133.86	82.19 MB/sec [4K blocks]
		   Uncached Write	138.05	78.11 MB/sec [256K blocks]
		   Uncached Read	59.82	17.51 MB/sec [4K blocks]
		   Uncached Read	241.51	121.38 MB/sec [256K blocks]
	   Random	64.33	
		   Uncached Write	19.20	2.03 MB/sec [4K blocks]
		   Uncached Write	120.67	38.63 MB/sec [256K blocks]
		   Uncached Read	2426.65	17.20 MB/sec [4K blocks]
		   Uncached Read	714.65	132.61 MB/sec [256K blocks]

 

I do have one question I am having troble locationg an answer for, With ZFS drives in a JBOD it appears that each disk has its own file system and ZFS combines the pool to look like a large file system.. Does this mean if there is a drive failure the FS can recover w/out loosing data on other disks? (unlike consolidated disks from osx soft raid) All I can find on google says that ZFS wont automatically recover but its easier to recover the data when this does happen when compared to other JBOD implementations.. cant find any specifics or procedures regarding this though.

 

And finally, here are my hopes and expectations for Snow Leopards ZFS Implementation:

1. Use of ZFS for main OS disk

2. Ability to use Time Machine to backup to and from a ZFS disk

3. ZFS Pool Managment in Disk Manager

4. Remove external drives from the ZFS pool by Ejecting through GUI (USB Thumb disks are going to love ZFS!)

5. Ability to delete files off the ZFS w/out droping to console to delete files/trash

 

I dont know if ZFS is in the Snow Leopard Beta, it seems few people are as intrested in it as I am.. If anyone has the beta and can answer some of my questions I'd appriceate it..

 

-R

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dreadlocks
dreadlocks
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Could always use a boot partition that stores the kernel and code needed to mount the ZFS root.. thats how you can have a ZFS root in FreeBSD.... So its possible, question is will Apple implement it or will we have to hack it?

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  • 2 weeks later...
goko
goko
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The only real thing that really interests me about Snow Leopard is inclusion of full ZFS support

 

Couldn't agree more. As far as I know, ZFS will only be supported in Server version of OS X.

 

If anyone wants to get in touch with ZFS the easiest way is to run NexentaOS in fusion/parallels. It has native ZFS boot support.

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dreadlocks
dreadlocks
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Yea the only thing you'll find on apple.com regarding ZFS is on the Snow Leopard Server page, however the filesystem will be implemented at the kernel level. As far as I can tell the Retail and Server vanilla kernels are identical, and the ZFS is bsd licensed.. Given Retail Leopard includes software raid support and zfs-readonly I am holding high hopes it will be available to both desktop & server operating systems.

 

I suspect it wont be a default FS regardless, and I see no reason not to include it in Retail. Even without boot disk support the average mac user would benefit from using ZFS on removable flash/thumb drives.

 

Also given most professionals use the desktop version, the additional data integrity ZFS provides would be just as attractive as when raid support was introduced..

 

Speaking of raid support, with the introduction of ZFS, OSX will finally get more software raid options than 0,1,10.. Thats something that has been desired for quite a while from my understanding.

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  • 3 weeks later...
kocoman
kocoman
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ZFS is not included in the retail because Apple doesn't want all the newbies jamming their tech support line when something goes wrong/has too many questions. for the server version its included because you pay more for it (for tech support too). its a simple business decision..

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Adrian Fogge
Adrian Fogge
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I am amazed at the level of {censored} that comes out of some people's mouths.

 

ZFS is being *marketed* to the server market as the high-end allows for the development of products until things can become cheap enough for the end users.

 

Have a look at Solid State Disks... just a few years ago, we were looking at $3000 for a 4GB SSD yet now here we are looking at having them available in commodity systems.

 

Think about it this way... most newbies simply don't know what filesystem they are using and simply couldn't care either way.

 

For fun, ask your neighbors which operating system they run on their computer.

*IF* they answer exactly what they are running (Windows XP Home, Windows Vista Ultimate x64, Mac OS X Tiger, etc.) than ask them what filesystem they are using.

 

There are *not* going to be support calls with questions about a user's *filesystem*.

 

If the functionality exists in Server to boot from ZFS, than it will *also* exist in Client as it is the same OS. Server *is* client with additional apps installed as well.

 

~Adrian

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  • 2 months later...
sleeepy
sleeepy
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I don't think you can boot a ZFS drive in Snow Leopard yet, or in any operating system for that matter.

 

Try booting from the OpenSolaris DVD. It boots under ZFS. Then you can add a hard drive to the pool, remove the DVD from the pool and reboot.

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Adrian Fogge
Adrian Fogge
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Try booting from the OpenSolaris DVD. It boots under ZFS. Then you can add a hard drive to the pool, remove the DVD from the pool and reboot.

 

Sleeepy, in case you did not notice, 3 months before your posting, Embio managed to answer the exact same thing.

 

OpenSolaris does

 

Thanks for playing though.

 

Next up, the diskutil command now offers ZFS Version 13 (up from Version 8 that is provided in the Leopard Open-Source version from MacOSForge). Means that we are now on-par with the ZFS-Fuse community. Still, it's something that we were expecting as there really isn't anything that would prevent Apple from going with a later version of ZFS.

 

As things sit right now, even though we can add the bootable flag to the zpools, we are still not able to get the Mac EFI Bootloader to detect a ZFS volume. Doesn't mean that Apple will not also release an updated EFI build to allow for ZFS bootable volumes come WWDC though.

 

One thing that I am doing right now is using /System from a HFS+ volume with /Applications, /Library, /Users and /Developer running from a zpool with lzjb compression enabled. Overall, it is working very good.

 

The only real snag is the Adobe CS4 apps which refuse to run from ZFS. Although, this seems to be more of an issue with Adobe CS4 running from a case sensitive filesystem instead the of HFS+ (Journaled - Case Insensitive) that the vast majority of Mac users have as their root filesystem.

 

~Adrian

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  • 1 month later...
Hugo_bee
Hugo_bee
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excuse me.. but how did you worked with ZFS?

I've installed into leopard.. to create a pool. but OSINSTALL of snow (modded or not) won't care of it.

no way to clone with disk tools (clone.. genius etc..)

so what is the advantages to have a full read write and diskutil access to zfs from leo if you can't boot after?

I've created a gpt scheme on a drive.. created a pool zfs. ok.. copied -RHL all data from a snow setup .. but after? pcefiv9 doesn't care of it.. nor chameleon v2.. so.. is useful or not? is only my opinion

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dreadlocks
dreadlocks
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ZFS support has apparently been dropped (ie left how it currently is) in SnowLeopard.

http://www.macnn.com/articles/09/06/10/sno...d.includes.zfs/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/10/snow_leopard_no_zfs/

 

Several months ago you could find ZFS refrences for SnowLeopard Server all over apple's website, it appears now they are all systematically being removed.

 

my ZFS pools have been moved from my OSX Server to OpenSolaris servers, performance is superb.

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Ai Haibara
Ai Haibara
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I actually ported back ZFS from build 10A286 to build 10A380 and it's working pretty well. Still no automount when you eject and connect a USB volume, but at least it no more crashes the whole system with a KP when you pull the disk off without unmounting.

It also seems that ZFS support was quite finished, since I also found a ZFSManager.framework which is used by Disk Utility (as you can see by launching the application from terminal); however, Disk Utility just seems to ignore zfs.fs as it doesn't show up in the initialize menu. I'm almost certain it actually uses zfs.fs to detect which kind of pool is mounted, but somehow you can't directly erase the volume with ZFS.

 

Sherry Haibara

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Hugo_bee
Hugo_bee
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ok I took it as a sad true.

then I moved to EFI+hfs in gpt

 

I used munky method to make efi bootable.. in order to load snow.

i hope it'll start.. feww :D

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Hugo_bee
Hugo_bee
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as you see in my prev post.. in attachments.. i boot until nvdanv50.. loaded and registered

the kernel log is pretty.. but the boot hangs at that row.

 

the system log is very full of strangeness.. boh

 

I tried to restart but only with -v.. no more -x as before. and I have the same Kernel Panic as booting in MBR scheme.

as munky wrote.. Efi is HFS+ with Extra and extensions.mkext..

 

the EFI/Extra has dsmos, appleacpips2nub and the dsdt.aml is in the Buddy partition.

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