"HP has released AdvFS, a file system that was developed by Digital Equipment Corp and continues to be part of HP's Tru64 operating system," announced Xose Vazquez Perez, offering a link to the re-licensed source code. 2.4 maintainer Willy Tarreau replied favorably, "wow! That's awesome. I discovered it in 1999 and 9 years later, it probably remains the most advanced FS I encountered." HP's Linda Knippers explained:
"In case its not clear, this is a GPLv2 technology release, not an actual port to Linux. We're hoping that the code and documentation will be helpful in the development of new file systems for Linux that will provide similar capabilities, and perhaps used to make tweaks to existing file systems."
Interesting features found in AdvFS include, "simplified file system and storage management; flexible multi-device storage pools shared by multiple file systems, with or without a volume manager; exceptional file system availability (no need to take file systems off-line to expand, shrink or reconfigure; snapshots for consistent backups while applications are on-line; ability to recover deleted files); wide range of performance management tools (fine grain control over file system and file placement within the storage pool; on-line rebalancing of files and free space across the storage pool; on-demand or background file and file system defragmentation); and transaction log management, allowing choices for logging metadata and data asynchronously or synchronously."