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With the nineteen-nineties well behind us now, what are some of the newer file system technologies that will give Microsoft's New Technology File System competition moving into the future?
Exactly my question, after completing part one of this two-part blog series. :)
<-- "PC", aka actor, author and humorist John Hodgman, from Apple's Get a Mac advertising campaign. This and other images courtesy Wikipedia.
No one wants to be a one-trick pony, like the "PC" character in the popular television ad series from Apple. In the mid-to-late nineties, NTFS may have ruled supreme, and did, in this engineer's humble opinion, truly provide state-of-the-art performance. However, since then, competition, both paid-license and open-source, has vastly evolved and improved.
But before I move onto the other file systems, I need to give credit to two more foundational software engineers. They made my life easier in the nineties and beyond, both at work and at home, and worked at Team Microsoft with Dave Cutler to develop NTFS: Tom Miller and Gary Kimura.
Tom Miller followed Dave Cutler from DEC to Microsoft, and wrote the original 50-page specification document for the NT File System. Gary Kimura, a Professor for the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, followed Dave Cutler from DEC as well, and worked on porting Microsoft's DOS-FAT16 and IBM's OS/2-HPFS to NTFS. He also worked with Tom Miller for design and implementation of version 1.0 of the NT File System.
Okay, now to get out of the past: A list of file systems from the Wikipedia link below, and from my own life's experience, that look promising moving into the future -
Apple's iPhone File System: Is a component of the OS X operating system kernel "XNU". It was developed as a collaboration between Apple and the Open-Source software community. File systems on mobile devices are becoming increasingly important as folks continue to migrate away from their boxes - just ask your friend in Tokyo!
Unix File System (UFS): Also called Berkeley Fast File System. Used with the FreeBSD operating system for PCs. I met a respected Electrical Engineer, working for Canadian laboratory robotics OEM CRS Robotics, circa 2003, who was a fan of FreeBSD. In addition to his paid gig working on the Human Genome project, he custom-integrated a laptop, choosing FreeBSD for the OS, and cranked out some amazing tunes in his Volkswagen Jetta as we tooled around Burlington, Ontario!
Global File System (GFS): Used for Linux computer clusters, often for massive computational tasks at universities and government computing facilities. Released under the free software General Public License (GPL). Thinking of modeling how that butterfly flapping its wings in China impacts your local weather?
Garmin Automotive Navigation Device File System: Proprietary? Saw postings in online forums and a hacking site that indicates this likely is the case. Used by truck and taxi drivers, and so designed to be robust. Used a Garmin device on a recent trip to Easton, PA - it performed flawlessly!
Scientific Atlanta (Cisco) Digital Cable Box File System(?): Assuming an on-board file system, but active file system in current versions of their residential hardware box may reside in a remote server at my local Time Warner server cluster computer room. This box brings me my digital cable television programs, both live and on-demand. Strongly suspect this is proprietary, with very high reliability designed-in.
Sun Microsystem's ZFS (Z - File System): Introduced four years ago, it features high storage capabilities, volume management, and other features designed to bullet-proof the operating system running on top of it from data loss or down-time.
Google File System (GFS): A proprietary, industrial-specification file system used on Google's globally-located computer clusters (data farms). Likely distinct from the file system associated with yesterday's-announced Google Chrome OS for netbooks. The Chrome OS file system looks non-proprietary, and is based on open-source Linux kernel technology.
The GFS file system used on cluster computers factors into your highly-reliable search experience. It's a rare occurrence that anyone on the planet runs into a Google browser ping problem, unless your local-country government official has decided to block your favorite BBC News or similar un-flattering web site. Why can't they just handle the truth?
VMWare's VMFS: Also known as Virtual Machine File System. Another cluster computer file system. It stores disk images of a virtual machine - a software emulation of a traditional hardware computing system - including snapshots. Easy scale-ability of VMFS volumes is a feature. Sun's Network FS (NFS) is an alternate file system for running VM Ware, so you're not stuck with a single software vendor for your cluster needs.
- Larry Kelley
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hodgman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL_license
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrome_OS
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Re: Innovation of the 90's: Microsoft’s New Technology File System (NTFS) - Part 2 - Final
