
ZFS pools the available storage and manages all disks as a single entity. ZFS is designed to run on a single server, potentially with hundreds if not thousands of attached storage drives. As a 128-bit file system, ZFS has the potential to scale to 256 quadrillion zettabytes. ZFS initially stood for Zettabyte File System, but the word zettabyte no longer holds any significance in the context of the file system. Users include scientific institutions, national laboratories, government agencies, financial firms, telecommunications, and media and entertainment companies. ZFS and OpenZFS tend to appeal to enterprises that need to manage large quantities of data and ensure data integrity. Companies with commercial products built on OpenZFS include Cloudscaling, Datto, Delphix, Joyent, Nexenta, SoftNAS and Spectra Logic. OpenZFS works on all Linux distributions, but only some commercial vendors provide it as part of their distributions. OSes that support OpenZFS include Apple OS X, FreeBSD, illumos (which is based on OpenSolaris), and Linux variants such as Debian, Gentoo and Ubuntu. The open community works on new features, improvements and bug fixes to the OpenZFS code.
OPENZFS RELEASES CODE
Oracle uses its proprietary ZFS code as the foundation for Oracle Solaris, the Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance and other Oracle technologies.Ī development community started a new open source project, called OpenZFS, based on the ZFS source code in the final release of OpenSolaris. Engineers at Oracle continue to enhance and add features to ZFS on Solaris. acquired Sun in 2010 and trademarked the term ZFS. The OpenSolaris open source project, which included ZFS, ended after Oracle Corp.
OPENZFS RELEASES MAC OS
A community of developers, including representatives from Sun and other vendors, worked on enhancements to the open source code and ported ZFS to additional OSes, including FreeBSD, Linux and Mac OS X.
OPENZFS RELEASES LICENSE
In 2005, Sun released the ZFS source code under a common development and distribution license (CDDL) as part of the open source OpenSolaris OS. Sun engineers began development work on ZFS in 2001 for the company's Unix-based Solaris operating system ( OS).


Replication - the process of making a replica (a copy) of something.The ZFS file system and volume manager is characterized by data integrity, high scalability and built-in storage features such as: to direct and control the placement, storage and retrieval of data in enterprise-class computing systems. ZFS is a local file system and logical volume manager created by Sun Microsystems Inc.
