5 ms·

Testing out snapshots in Apple’s next-generation APFS file system

101 points by Garbage 10y ago

jhoechtl 10y ago
How does APFS relate to BTRFS or XFS?
- ksherlock 10y ago
  Dominic Giampaolo was involved with XFS, BeFS, and now APFS, so it should compare favorably to them. It's currently not feature complete or documented so I don't think anyone can give a good comparison yet.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- lee_ars 10y ago
  It's intended to occupy the same "next-gen" niche and has a whole smattering of similar features (64-bit inodes, copy on write, atomicity, write coalescing, snaps and clones, fast opportunistic locking, native encryption options, some thin provisioning, checksumming). It's also currently very beta. The management tools are currently CLI-only; it can't be used on a boot volume; it's case-sensitive (not case-preserving, but actual-for-real case-sensitive); it checksums metadata but not all file data. Apple intends for it to be their whole-ecosystem file system (and it's already showing up in iOS - https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/01/ios-10-3-will-be-apples-first-update-to-convert-storage-to-apfs/ https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/01/ios-10-3-will-be-apple...), and the rollout will be fun to keep an eye on. Today, APFS is an interesting beta project and if you're an apple developer—especially one whose apps do more than casual manipulation of the file system—you should start getting your hands dirty with it. From an end-user perspective, getting proper support of snaps and clones will be a welcome relief, especially since it seems blindingly obvious that APFS snaps will replace Time Machine's current mess of links. But yeah, it's beta. You can't use it in production yet (can't even boot off of it). Will need to wait until later this year to get a more mature version of it before it can be adequately benchmarked and evaluated in prod.
  - lathiat 10y ago
    Might be beta, but supposedly iOS 10.3 (the next major release) will ship APFS for iOS devices: https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/01/ios-10-3-will-be-apples-first-update-to-convert-storage-to-apfs/ https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/01/ios-10-3-will-be-apple... Not clear at this stage if it will make it to production release, but starting on iOS devices makes a lot of sense given it's likely subjected to a smaller subset of crazyness compared to Macs.
    - CharlesW 10y ago
      > Might be beta, but supposedly iOS 10.3 (the next major release) will ship APFS for iOS devices… More than "supposedly", I'd say—if you're using the iOS 10.3 beta now, your phone's filesystem has already been updated to APFS. :)
  - mikhailt 10y ago
    Does anyone actually know for sure if Apple ever updated the APFS preview code since WWDC seed? I feel like we're like 2-3 years behind of Apple right now on the status of APFS for macOS. The fact that it's booting right now on iOS devices with 10.3 Beta with zero issues should tell us that the current APFS build at Apple is already way ahead of what we know about it and Apple did announce that all platforms will be using APFS this year. So I'm wondering if they're going to release the final preview in 10.12.x at all or it'll be in 10.13 and auto-converted like iOS 10.3.
    - galad87 10y ago
      Yes they did, and APFS volumes created with the WWDC seed are no longer compatible with the latest release.
  - 1_2__3 10y ago
    How is their design choice on case sensitivity a reflection of its production readiness (or lack thereof)?
    - 10y ago
- alwillis 10y ago
  Checkout the session on APFS at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2016/701/ https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2016/701/
fit2rule 10y ago
Wow. Came for the APFS next-gen shit, left with a ton of DTrace knowledge and inspiration to learn more techniques like this ..

101 points by Garbage 10y ago

jhoechtl 10y ago

How does APFS relate to BTRFS or XFS?

ksherlock 10y ago
Dominic Giampaolo was involved with XFS, BeFS, and now APFS, so it should compare favorably to them. It's currently not feature complete or documented so I don't think anyone can give a good comparison yet.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
lee_ars 10y ago
It's intended to occupy the same "next-gen" niche and has a whole smattering of similar features (64-bit inodes, copy on write, atomicity, write coalescing, snaps and clones, fast opportunistic locking, native encryption options, some thin provisioning, checksumming). It's also currently very beta. The management tools are currently CLI-only; it can't be used on a boot volume; it's case-sensitive (not case-preserving, but actual-for-real case-sensitive); it checksums metadata but not all file data. Apple intends for it to be their whole-ecosystem file system (and it's already showing up in iOS - https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/01/ios-10-3-will-be-apples-first-update-to-convert-storage-to-apfs/ https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/01/ios-10-3-will-be-apple...), and the rollout will be fun to keep an eye on. Today, APFS is an interesting beta project and if you're an apple developer—especially one whose apps do more than casual manipulation of the file system—you should start getting your hands dirty with it. From an end-user perspective, getting proper support of snaps and clones will be a welcome relief, especially since it seems blindingly obvious that APFS snaps will replace Time Machine's current mess of links. But yeah, it's beta. You can't use it in production yet (can't even boot off of it). Will need to wait until later this year to get a more mature version of it before it can be adequately benchmarked and evaluated in prod.
- lathiat 10y ago
  Might be beta, but supposedly iOS 10.3 (the next major release) will ship APFS for iOS devices: https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/01/ios-10-3-will-be-apples-first-update-to-convert-storage-to-apfs/ https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/01/ios-10-3-will-be-apple... Not clear at this stage if it will make it to production release, but starting on iOS devices makes a lot of sense given it's likely subjected to a smaller subset of crazyness compared to Macs.
  - CharlesW 10y ago
    > Might be beta, but supposedly iOS 10.3 (the next major release) will ship APFS for iOS devices… More than "supposedly", I'd say—if you're using the iOS 10.3 beta now, your phone's filesystem has already been updated to APFS. :)
- mikhailt 10y ago
  Does anyone actually know for sure if Apple ever updated the APFS preview code since WWDC seed? I feel like we're like 2-3 years behind of Apple right now on the status of APFS for macOS. The fact that it's booting right now on iOS devices with 10.3 Beta with zero issues should tell us that the current APFS build at Apple is already way ahead of what we know about it and Apple did announce that all platforms will be using APFS this year. So I'm wondering if they're going to release the final preview in 10.12.x at all or it'll be in 10.13 and auto-converted like iOS 10.3.
  - galad87 10y ago
    Yes they did, and APFS volumes created with the WWDC seed are no longer compatible with the latest release.
- 1_2__3 10y ago
  How is their design choice on case sensitivity a reflection of its production readiness (or lack thereof)?
  - 10y ago
alwillis 10y ago
Checkout the session on APFS at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2016/701/ https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2016/701/

fit2rule 10y ago

Wow. Came for the APFS next-gen shit, left with a ton of DTrace knowledge and inspiration to learn more techniques like this ..