The future of OpenZFS and FreeBSD
Channel: EuroBSDcon
Date: 2019-10-27

Looking at the recent changes to the OpenZFS Project, and how FreeBSD will interact with the OpenZFS Project going forward.

This talk will discuss:

How the OpenZFS project started
How the OpenZFS project has changed over the last 5 years
The introduction of the monthly ZFS Leadership Call
New problems as ZFS has matured (needing to add a deprecation policy, etc)
How the OpenZFS project is working to reduce the differences across platforms (command line switches, NFS differences)
Interoperability improvements (feature flag ‘compatibility’ groups)
New procedures to prevent divergence and coordinate development across platforms (reserving flags, wider discussion before names for features/flags are decided)
Then switch gears and cover FreeBSD specific issues:

The switch to ZoL as upstream
Why we are making the change
What we get out of it
How it is better for all of OpenZFS
And finally a status report:

ZFS-on-Linux and ZFS-on-FreeBSD are now “OpenZFS”
There is no LinuxKPI in ZFS (kill the FUD)
What has OpenZFS done for me lately (new and upcoming features)
Allan Jude

FreeBSD user (2001), doc (2014), and src (2015) committer. FreeBSD Core Team (2016-2020)
Co-Author of “FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS” and “FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS” with Michael W. Lucas
VP Engineering at Klara Inc (FreeBSD development and support services)