OpenZFS 2.3-rc1 Delivers RAIDZ Expansion, Fast Dedup & Direct IO

OpenZFS 2.3-rc1 is now available for testing as the next major feature release to this open-source ZFS file-system implementation for Linux and FreeBSD systems.

OpenZFS 2.3 is shaping up to be another significant step forward for this popular out-of-tree route for ZFS on Linux systems. OpenZFS 2.3-rc1 presents RAIDZ expansion support to allow new devices to be added to an existing RAIDZ pool to increase storage capacity without inducing any downtime.

OpenZFS 2.3 also delivers fast dedup support as a "major performance upgrade" to how OpenZFS handles deduplication of file-system contents.

OpenZFS 2.3 also introduces Direct IO as a means to bypass the ARC for reads/writes for enhancing performance with NVMe storage devices and other scenarios where bypassing the cache increases efficiency.

OpenZFS 2.3-rc1 can also now handle files and directories with names up to 1023 characters long and there are a number of bug fixes throughout for this OpenZFS file-system code.

OpenZFS 2.3 is also bringing support for the Linux 6.11 kernel where as up to now only officially supported through Linux 6.10. Going back to the Linux 4.18 kernel is still supported as is using FreeBSD 13.3 and later. Downloads and more details on the OpenZFS 2.3-rc1 test release via GitHub.