HP donating file system to Linux

HP on Monday is announcing the contribution of its Tru64 Unix Advanced File System (AdvFS) source code to the Linux community, offering capabilities in uptime, security, and improved performance of Linux file systems, the company said.

AdvFS will be donated as a reference implementation of an enterprise Linux file system. Code will be made available under the General Public License Version 2 for compatibility with the Linux kernel, HP said.

HP’s file system could offer capabilities beyond the ext4 file system project for Linux, said Bdale Garbee, chief technologist for HP’s open source and Linux organization. These could include improvements in file system simplification and storage management, Garbee said.

“File systems tend to take time to mature to a level of robustness and proven capability that would cause a customer to be willing to bet their mission-critical data on a particular file system,” Garbee said.

“We will actively participate in the development of next-generation file systems for Linux, and this particular announcement furthers that by indicating that we’re making people, source code, and the relevant design documents available to the community to accelerate the process of development,” said Garbee.

AdvFS has been deployed for more than 16 years by enterprises; it simplifies file and storage management, enables online system backups, and increases data availability, according to HP.

“HP’s contribution of the Advanced File System code, coupled with their overall resource commitment to Linux, will greatly accelerate the development and commercial availability of improved system functionality for Linux,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director for the Linux Foundation, in a statement released by HP.

An analyst viewed HP’s contribution as falling into two categories of code contributed to open source. In some cases, the technology is outdated, and in other cases, it is good technology; AdvFS meets both criteria, said analyst Al Gillen, research vice president for system software at IDC.

AdvFS is pretty good technology, Gillen said. But “Tru6 really doesn’t have a future as a product,” he said. HP is moving Tru64 users over to HP-UX Unix.

“It’s really a no-lose for HP because it’s not like they were giving out a technology that they were incorporating into a different product,” Gillen said. The contribution, though, does help improve Linux, he said. It could be two to three years before AdvFS might show up in the Linux kernel, said Garbee.

HP anticipates developers will study the file system’s source code and examine its algorithms. While Sun’s Zettabyte File System (ZFS) has similar capabilities to AdvFS, ZFS is licensed under Sun’s Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL), which is not compatible with Linux, said Garbee.