Perfect eComStation - Storage redesign

[Qetzlcoatl]

Whole Storage subsystem must be redesigned.
Few examples:

support for GPT partition table in addition to traditional FDisk partition table
support for both iSCSI initiator and host
may be something like IBM EVMS needed to access 3-party filesystems and have "software RAID"
integrated, native support for multipathing
abilty to mount filesystem from file, not from block device (or see file as block device)
ability to mount filesystem into free directory inside another one

File systems changes needed:

unified filesystem cache
separate filesystems to 5 groups - legacy, compatibility, current, 3-rd generation, network

"legacy" filesystems:

common 32-bit FAT16/VFAT/FAT32 with proper work on USB devices and proper EA support
32-bit HPFS with support for >2TB size (using Large Extents) but backward compatible, integrated backside defragmenter thread

compatibility filesystems:

R/W NTFS5
ext3

current filesystems:

bootable JFS (we have it already!!!)
BeFS ??? (it has integral support for EA, live search ability - hello WinFS and metadata checksums, it is extent based)

3G filesystems

only one I see right now covered by "compatible" license - ZFS

network filesystems

NFSv4
CIFS

may be I lost something....

[Qetzlcoatl]

One new addition to freeware (opensource) filesystems released by HP - AdvFS!
Many design concepts shared with Sun ZFS, but 2-d generation instead of ZFS.
I have strong expirience working with AdvFS and sure that "it is something [cool]!"
I think that AdvFS itself is not needed in eCS (especialy if we will port ZFS and/or heavily expand LVM/JFS pair), but some ideas and may be code (with respect to GPL2) can be used extending eCS storage subsystem...