About an year ago, we had reported that Pune based KQInfoTech is working on porting Sun’s ZFS file system to linux. They have now announced that a “Technology Preview” of the port is now complete, and the ported ZFS for Linux is now available in beta. They are looking for interested folks to try out the beta and help them with finding bugs and other issues.

But first some background, taken from previous PuneTech articles about KQInfoTech.

What is KQInfotech?

Pune-based KQInfoTech is an organization started by Anurag Agarwal and Anand Mitra, both of whom chucked high-paying jobs in the industry because they felt that there was a desperate need to work on the quality of students that is being churned out by our colleges. For the 2 years or so, they have been trying various experiements in education, at the engineering college level. All their experiments are based on one basic premise: students’ ability to pay should not be a deterrent – in other words, the offerings should be free for the students; KQInfoTech focuses on finding alternative ways to pay for the costs of running the course. As a part of this initiative, they provide services to industry, and take on open source projects, and the students in their mentorship program actually do the work under their guidance.

What is ZFS?

ZFS – the Zettabyte File System – is an enormous advance in capability on existing file systems. It provides greater space for files, hugely improved administration and greatly improved data security. Wikipedia has this to say:

ZFS is a combined file system and logical volume manager designed by Sun Microsystems. The features of ZFS include support for high storage capacities, integration of the concepts of filesystem and volume management, snapshots and copy-on-write clones, continuous integrity checking and automatic repair, RAID-Z and native NFSv4 ACLs.

Why ZFS on Linux by KQInfotech?

ZFS is arguably one of the best file-systems available today, and Linux is one of the most widely used operating systems for servers by new startups. So, having ZFS available on Linux would be great. And, With many years of experience in Veritas building VxFS, another one of best file-systems in the world, the founders of KQInfoTech do have the technical background to be able to do a good job of this.

At this point, ZFS is not available on Linux. See the Linux section of ZFS entry on Wikipedia for more details.

So what does this port contain?

This port of ZFS is an extension to the port of DMU layer by Brian Behlendorf. We have added the missing ZPL layer to Brian’s port. With this addition it becomes possible to mount the zfs filesystem on linux and leverage ZFS’s features on linux.

What next?

If you’re interested in participating in the beta and helping out, or you’re one of the people whose business would really be helped by having ZFS available on Linux, apply for the beta, or get in touch with KQInfoTech: zfs-query@kqinfotech.com.

Also, check out the FAQ.