Although not discussed in today’s keynote, Apple is adding a new “universal” filesystem to iOS and macOS. Apple File System (APFS) will likely replace HFS+ as the default filesystem for Macintosh computers, iPads, and iPhones and brings a wealth of modern features. But judging from the initial developer documentation, that’s not going to happen for a few more years. And there’s still much confusion about how APFS and CoreStorage, introduced in Mac OS X 10.7, will interact.
Filesystems
De-Allocating is the Core Issue for Thin Provisioning
One of the biggest problems for thin provisioning is not the provisioning part: It’s fairly easy for a storage array to allocate on request: “I need a block; here’s some data I want you to write.” And the storage array just starts allocating, and allocating. But, the operating system never goes back and says “I don’t need that block anymore.”
An Introduction To exFAT
Microsoft already gave the world FAT and NTFS, and both have become common in the non-Windows world thanks to flash drives, SD cards, and portable disks. But the folks from Redmond are now introducing a new filesystem, exFAT. Do we really need a new filesystem?