OpenZFS Project

The OpenZFS project was announced today. According to Justin Gibbs of the FreeBSD Foundation: this is a cross-platform effort to ensure the continued evolution of the ZFS file system. For developers and users of FreeBSD, the formation of OpenZFS clarifies the future of ZFS support for our platform. The FreeBSD project is now an equal partner in defining the course for ZFS. OpenZFS combines the man power of the FreeBSD, Illumos, Linux, and MacOS communities to provide a level of test coverage, feature development, documenation, and support that wasn’t possible with our separate efforts. Most importantly, OpenZFS will improve platform interoperability and reduce fragmentation of ZFS implementations. Today is an exciting day for ZFS and the FreeBSD platform. I encourage you to browse http://www.open-zfs.org and to get involved. You are officially invited to help make the future of OpenZFS!

I had a chance to listen to Matt Ahrens, co-founder the ZFS project at Sun, describe the OpenZFS projects goals during his session at LinuxCon. One of the interesting resources provided by OpenZFS will be Office Houres, a regular opportunity to chat live with a ZFS expert. The first Office Hours will be held the week of Octobr 7 and the expert will be Matt Ahrens.

For those attending EuroBSDCon, Matt Ahrens will co-present with Martin Matuska “Open ZFS: Upcoming Features and Performance Enhancements with Illumos and FreeBSD joining Forces“.

For those in the San Francisco Bay area, there will be an OpenZFS Day on November 18 and 19.