Western Digital Has Been Developing A New Linux File-System: Zonefs

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Western Digital Has Been Developing A New Linux File-System: Zonefs

Western Digital has been contributing a lot more to the Linux kernel in recent years from RISC-V architecture bits to storage enhancements. The most recent code they have been working on in recent weeks is a brand new Linux file-system...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Zonefs-Linux-File-System

[Britoid]

What's the benefit of zoned storage over normal storage?

[waxhead]

What's the benefit of zoned storage over normal storage?

https://blog.westerndigital.com/what-is-zoned-storage-initiative/

[chuckula]

Man, movie tie-in marketing has gone to another level when the new Top Gun movie has its own filesystem.

#DangerZoneFS

[ssokolow]

What's the benefit of zoned storage over normal storage?

TL;DR: It's possible to read at significantly lower magnetic flux levels than writing, so they came up with a technology for packing data more densely called Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) but it's essentially append-only unless you're willing to wipe and rewrite everything that came before. To mitigate the downsides, the device is broken into "zones" so you only need to erase and rewrite the zone you're in if you want to change its contents.

The gist of SMR is that you write a band of data, then you overlap the next write, leaving only a fraction of the space you originally wrote intact, so you wind up with a write pattern that is reminiscent of laying down shingles on a roof.

An excellent technology for stuff that rarely (if ever) gets changed, like videos uploaded to YouTube or logs.

[Britoid]

TL;DR: It's possible to read at significantly lower magnetic flux levels than writing, so they came up with a technology for packing data more densely called Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) but it's essentially append-only unless you're willing to wipe and rewrite everything that came before. To mitigate the downsides, the device is broken into "zones" so you only need to erase and rewrite the zone you're in if you want to change its contents.

The gist of SMR is that you write a band of data, then you overlap the next write, leaving only a fraction of the space you originally wrote intact, so you wind up with a write pattern that is reminiscent of laying down shingles on a roof.

An excellent technology for stuff that rarely (if ever) gets changed, like videos uploaded to YouTube or logs.

Thanks, this was much clearer than the blog posts.

[ssokolow]

Thanks, this was much clearer than the blog posts.

No problem.

Another relevant example is that you can expose the blocks of an SSD to the OS as zones so the filesystem and applications can work together with it to aim for write patterns that minimize wear. (The garbage collection involved in faking an HDD adds wear as things have to be moved around.)

...plus, of course, the performance enhancements in any such situation from allowing specially written applications to bypass the abstraction and work with the storage directly. (Analogous to how SQL database engines often support using a drive directly rather than through a filesystem as a way to improve performance.)

[shmerl]

Still waiting for bcachefs to reach usable quality.

[ElectricPrism]

With big tech giants being so close to various governments there is a 0% chance I would use a filesystem developed by them.

[tildearrow]

With big tech giants being so close to various governments there is a 0% chance I would use a filesystem developed by them.

I am just curious about something...

I don't mean to support them, but, what would the government do with that data, if it is benign?

Do they have an evil plan?