QFS (Quick File System) is a filesystem from
Oracle
An oracle is a person or thing considered to provide insight, wise counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. If done through occultic means, it is a form of divination.
Descript ...
. It is tightly integrated with SAM, the Storage and Archive Manager, and hence is often referred to as SAM-QFS. SAM provides the functionality of a
hierarchical storage manager.
Features
QFS supports some volume management capabilities, allowing many disks to be grouped together into a file system. File system metadata can be kept on a separate set of disks, which is useful for streaming applications where long disk seeks cannot be tolerated.
SAM extends the QFS file system transparently to archival storage. A SAM-QFS file system may have a relatively small (gigabytes to terabytes) "disk cache" backed by petabytes of tape or other bulk storage. Files are copied to archival storage in the background, and transparently retrieved to disk when accessed. SAM-QFS supports up to four archival copies, each of which can be on disk, tape, optical media, or may be stored at a remote site also running SAM-QFS.
Shared QFS adds a multi-writer global filesystem, allowing multiple machines to read from & write to the same disks concurrently through the use of multi-ported disks or a
storage area network
A storage area network (SAN) or storage network is a computer network which provides access to consolidated, block device, block-level data storage. SANs are primarily used to access Computer data storage, data storage devices, such as disk ...
. (QFS also has a single-writer/multi-reader mode which can be used to share disks between hosts without the need for a network connection.)
History
SAM-QFS was designed and implemented at Large Storage Systems (LSC).
The lead architect of SAM-QFS was
Harriet Coverston, the founder and VP of Technology at LSC.
LSC and SAM-QFS were purchased by Sun in 2001.
Sun released the SAM-QFS source code to the
OpenSolaris
OpenSolaris () is a discontinued open-source computer operating system for SPARC and x86 based systems, created by Sun Microsystems and based on Solaris. Its development began in the mid 2000s and ended in 2010.
OpenSolaris was developed as ...
project in March 2008. After Oracle acquired Sun, Oracle continued to develop the SAM-QFS product. Later Oracle renamed SAM-QFS to Oracle HSM (Oracle Hierarchical Storage Manager). In 2014
Versity, a storage startup co-founded by SAM-QFS lead architect Coverston, released the Versity Storage Manager (VSM), a Linux-based HSM based on the SAM-QFS code.
Oracle announced 2019 the end of life to 2021, Versity shows an migration path.
Versity and Spectra Logic: The Path Forward for SAM-QFS and Oracle's HSM Replacement
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References
External links
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{{Filesystem
Computer file systems
Shared disk file systems
Sun Microsystems software
Distributed file systems supported by the Linux kernel
1999 software