Categories
Technology

What I would like from ZFS

You can read the Wikipedia entry here on ZFS to get an idea on what the file system offers and its real eases as well.

From using ZFS on my FreeNAS there is one thing I would like to see added that would really “take it up a notch” in my book: the ability to add a disk to  RAID-Z.

What I’m talking about is this situation:

  • You have four external drive bays
  • You fill three with 2 TB drives and setup RAID-Z
  • You get a fourth 2 TB drive and plug it in
  • You add it to the original RAID-Z and ZFS takes care of the rest

It is a lot like what Drobo has going for it, but on the file system level. You could add an arbitrary number of additional drives and ZFS would resize and just take over from there.

That would be really cool.

Apple’s File System

John Siracusa had an epic “rant” on filesystems on Hypercritical #56 and I greatly recommend that you go and listen to the whole thing. I’ve been using ZFS on my FreeNAS box for the past month, and listening to John sing his praises of the filesystem brought a smile to my face. I agree with everything he said on the podcast, so go and listen to it.

After that, read part of his review of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion on the filesystem for some more background.

I send you to listen and read so that I can say the following without having to worry about people misunderstanding me:

HFS+ is old and broken and Apple needs to get a modern filesystem under the hood of OS X and iOS with all possible speed.

That’s it.

ZFS was supposed to be it back with 10.5 Leopard. Even if they had just rolled it out with OS X Server with 10.6 and 10.7, that would have been fine. Showing some real movement to a new, modern file system would have been all anyone is asking for. That is not what we have received.

Instead, HFS+ keeps getting more and more tacked onto it in order to support more and better functionality in the OS. I shudder to think of what Apple might be able to focus on if they had gone with ZFS and switched it to the default file system for 10.7 or 10.8.

Microsoft is doing just that by beginning their long march with the announcement of ReFS. I applaud Microsoft for taking the plunge. I hope it might force Apple to doing the same.

During This One Podcast Episode 4, Phil and I talked about what we are looking for most from Apple in the coming releases of OS X … and I missed this. I want Apple to finally either develop or pick a modern file system to be the basis for their operating systems and ship it. Don’t tease us. Don’t trick us. Do it.

This is a huge, glaring weakness in Apple’s ecosystem right now. As a former Apple Genius I remember dealing with file system issues and there was really nothing that we nor the person could do about it except hope that Disk Utility could fix the issues or they had a good backup somewhere. ZFS would have, by its very nature, had us deal with less issues with the file system, saving work time and customer frustrations.

This needs to be done.

Categories
Business Technology

Pragmatism

Marco Arment hits the nail directly on the head with his post Right versus pragmatic.

The media companies can do what they will against file-sharing and other “evils” like streaming and download services, but that isn’t going to change their fortunes.

It is to the “change or die” point now.

Categories
Life Technology

TV Is Broken

Patrick Rhone of Minimal Mac just posted TV Is Broken, and I have to say that I agree. Through the story of his daughter and her encounter with “normal TV”, we learn a lot about how jarring it can be to try and enjoy anything that is currently available on any TV network.

I look forward to a future where we can choose what we want to watch … and all of the choices are there. That future is coming, but it is coming slowly.

One benefit I can already see is that I, as a parent (or my children, as parents, I guess) will have better tools to choose what my kids can watch, when they can watch it, and also more choices as to where they can watch it. That’s something that excites me.

Already we use Netflix more than broadcast TV and we do not subscribe to anything more than “grandma cable” in our house and I feel the better for it (mainly because we save the $40/month to bump up to a higher package).

The main thing I miss out on is sporting events … hopefully we will see the leagues push for no blackouts and streaming-only solutions in the future.

Categories
Technology

Haters Gonna Hate

One thing I will never understand is the need to announce when you are “leaving” something. I know I’ve done it in the past, but I need to stop … and everyone does.

I’m not sure why it has become a common practice to spend time writing up a treatise about why you are leaving a platform/OS/technology for something newer/shinier/ different, but it is depressing.

One really cool thing about technology is that we have choice. It is not just a choice of what we use but a choice to also move onto other things if our interest wane or our needs change.

That’s really cool.

It has not stopped us from still searching out the unicorns in our technology lives. That one magical thing that will forever fix everything that is wrong … be it productivity, popularity, speed, etc.

Then this morning I wake up to Mark Boulton’s Snark and more of the same. More attacking. More complaining. More entitlement. A sad state of affairs.

A little bit of “nice” could go a long way.