Nexenta Systems, Inc. is a leader in open source based storage software solutions. Our mission is Enterprise Class Storage for Everyone. Nexenta is privately held and based in Palo Alto, California.
Nexenta Operating System is a free and open source operating system combining the OpenSolaris kernel with GNU application userland. Nexenta Operating System runs on Intel/AMD 32/64bit hardware and is distributed as a single installable CD. Upgrades and binary packages not included on the CD can be installed from NexentaOS repository using Advanced Packaging Tool. In addition, source based software components can be downloaded from network repositories available at Debian/GNU Linux and Ubuntu Linux, and built as described here.
ZFS is a new kind of file system that provides simple administration, transactional semantics, end-to-end data integrity, and immense scalability. ZFS is not an incremental improvement to existing technology; it is a fundamentally new approach to data management. We've blown away 20 years of obsolete assumptions, eliminated complexity at the source, and created a storage system that's actually a pleasure to use.
ZFS presents a pooled storage model that completely eliminates the concept of volumes and the associated problems of partitions, provisioning, wasted bandwidth and stranded storage. Thousands of file systems can draw from a common storage pool, each one consuming only as much space as it actually needs. The combined I/O bandwidth of all devices in the pool is available to all filesystems at all times.
All operations are copy-on-write transactions, so the on-disk state is always valid. There is no need to fsck(1M) a ZFS file system, ever. Every block is checksummed to prevent