I am pleased to note that CoreStorage, the volume manager in Mac OS X Lion, is much more functional than I had guessed, including a number of undocumented but seemingly functional commands for on-the-fly resizing of logical volumes as well as manipulation of physical volumes.
Mac OS X
Mac OS X Lion Adds CoreStorage, a Volume Manager (Finally!)
Mac OS X was majorly deficient in that it lacked a volume manager. This wouldn’t seem like a big deal to the average user, but held back the operating system in so many ways. A volume manager brings storage virtualization to an operating system, allowing storage capacity efficiently to be managed and manipulated. But all this has changed in Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion†with CoreStorage.
How Does Dropbox Store Data?
Dropbox recently clarified (via their blog and privacy policy) that they “de-duplicate” user files. This has been known for quite a while, and is obvious to anyone who’s had a large file “upload” instantly. But how exactly does Dropbox store files? Are they really de-duplicated or just single-instanced? I set out to discover the answer.
Mac Users, Secure Your Stuff in Dropbox
Encryption is an important tool for individuals regardless of what they’re storing. Given the recent security failings of Dropbox, I highly recommend using methods like this to secure your important data before using the service!
Three Key Storage Features Missing in Mac OS X “Lion”
Apple is not in enterprise storage company to be sure, and news from WWDC dashes any hopes we had for ZFS and iSCSI support. USB 3.0 seems a foregone conclusion, but Apple seems intent on ignoring it as long as possible. Although I welcome the new storage features included in Lion, it is disappointing that these were left out.
