ServerWatch: ZFS: Should You?

“Sun’s new file system, Zettabyte File System (ZFS) is changing
the world. Well, the computing world, at least. ZFS brings with it
a host of advantages, but it also has limitations, and performance
considerations and manageability should be factored into the
migration decision and deployment process.

“For starters, sites with large amounts of storage, say .5 PB or
more, use Veritas almost without exception. Their volume manager,
VxVM, combined with the file system, VxFS, makes storage management
very robust and easy to handle, compared with native OS file
systems and volume managers. That is, until ZFS. The main remaining
advantage for VxVM/FS is that you can use the same volumes on
multiple platforms. AIX, Linux, Solaris and other operating systems
can all use the same file system, and frequently the Veritas file
system outperforms native alternatives. Being able to use the same
file system across multiple platforms is important, especially when
a SAN is involved. Migrating services to new servers on different
platforms is far simpler when there is no need to worry about file
systems…”

Complete
Story