NFS storage pool
As a protocol, NFS has been around since the mid-80s. It was originally developed by Sun Microsystems as a protocol for sharing files, which is what it's been used for up to this day. Actually, it's still being developed, which is quite surprising for a technology that's so old. For example, NFS version 4.2 came out in 2016. In this version, NFS received a very big update, such as the following:
- Server-side copy: A feature that significantly enhances the speed of cloning operations between NFS servers by carrying out cloning directly between NFS servers
- Sparse files and space reservation: Features that enhance the way NFS works with files that have unallocated blocks, while keeping an eye on capacity so that we can guarantee space availability when we need to write data
- Application data block support: A feature that helps applications that work with files as block devices (disks)
- Better pNFS implementation
There are other bits...