ZFS alternative for Linux?
Solution 1:
Have you considered NexentaStor or Nexenta core? It's actively developed now that the OpenSolaris project's fate is unknown. Nexenta is also more GNU-like. The Nexenta Community edition is a good appliance-like implementation which leverages ZFS features and provides an excellent GUI. The Nexenta core is a stripped-down variant that's essentially a more usable OpenSolaris.
See: http://nexenta.org/projects/site/wiki/WhyNexenta
Solution 2:
There's a native kernel implementation of ZFS available for linux now, being developed by LLNL.
There are packages for ubuntu available in a PPA, which are easily compiled on debian (just add the deb-src repo to apt's sources.list, download, update the debian/changelog, and dh-build-package. then install the zfs-dkms and other packages).
I've been using XFS for over 10 years on linux, and btrfs for about a year. I've been using ZFS for a few days now and am completely sold on it. it's what i've always wanted in a filesystem without even really knowing it...answers pretty much every annoyance i've ever had with disk and filesystem management.
I'll be migrating my current btrfs disks (currently used for bulk storage of files, rsync backups, etc) over to ZFS in the near future. And I'm already planning a future migration of /home and other directories to a zpool.
LINKS:
http://zfsonlinux.org/
https://launchpad.net/~zfs-native/+archive/stable