Info OpenZFS for Windows

OpenZFS for Windows 2.3 rc6f

Release seems not to too far away as we see a new release every few days to fix the remaining problems that came up as more users testing OpenZFS on Windows now on different soft and hardware environments. So folk test it and report remaining problems under https://github.com/openzfsonwindows/openzfs/issues

In my case the rc6f from today fixed a remaining BSOD problem around unmount and zvol destroy. It is quite save to try OpenZFS on Windows as long as your bootdrive is not encrypted so you can boot cli mode directly to delete the filesystem driver /windows/system32/drivers/openzfs.sys on a driver bootloop problem (I have not seen a bootloop problem for quite a long time. Last time it was due an incompatibility with the Aomei driver).

I missed OpenZfS on Windows. While Storage Spaces is a superiour method to pool disks of any type or size with auto hot/cold data tiering, ZFS is far better for large arrays with many storage features not available on Windows with ntfs or ReFS. Windows ACL handling was always a reason for me to avoid Linux/SAMBA. Only Illumos comes near with worldwide unique Windows AD SID and SMB groups that can contain groups.

Windows with SMB Direct/RDMA (requires Windows Server) and Hyper-V is on the way to be a premium storage platform.