TheVERITAS File System (orVxFS; calledJFS andOnlineJFS inHP-UX) is anextent-basedfile system. It was originally developed byVERITAS Software.^[1] Through anOEM agreement, VxFS is used as the primary filesystem of theHP-UXoperating system. With on-linedefragmentation and resize support turned on via license, it is known asOnlineJFS.^[2]It is also supported onAIX,Linux,Solaris,OpenSolaris,SINIX/Reliant UNIX,UnixWare andSCO OpenServer.^{[citation needed]} VxFS was originally developed forAT&T'sUnix System Laboratories. VxFS is packaged as a part of theVeritas Storage Foundation (which also includesVeritas Volume Manager).

According to the vendor, it was the first commercialjournaling file system.^[3]That claim can be taken in two ways, i.e., the first implementation of a journaling file system in a commercial context, or the first file system available as an unbundled product.

Dan Koren is cited as one of the original developers of VxFS.^[4]He notes in a mailing list that they "finished release 1.0 one year or so later" after starting development of VxFS under a contract withAT&T Corporation in 1990.^[5] Other sources agree that the product was first released in 1991.^[6][7]

As the internet was not widely available in the early 1990s, getting a new file system deployed for Unix-like operating systems was more difficult, so the one- to two-year delay in the release and commercialization of this file system was not unusual.^{[citation needed]}

The on-disk layout of VxFS is versioned and upgradeable while the file system is mounted. This file system has gone through ten versions.

• Version 2 added support for filesets, dynamic inode allocation and ACLs. Layouts 1–3 stopped being supported in VxFS 4.0.
• Version 4 added support for storage checkpoints and forVeritas Cluster File System. Version 4 was released in VxFS 3.2.1. Layout version 4 is no longer supported under VxFS 5.1.^[8]
• Version 5 started support for file systems up to 32terabytes (2⁴⁵ bytes) in size. Individual files can be up to 2 terabytes in size. Version 5 was introduced in VxFS 3.5 and is no longer supported under VxFS 5.1.^[8]
• Version 6 added support for file systems and files up to 8exabytes (2⁶³ bytes) in size. Version 6 also introduced support fornamed streams/resource forks, for multiple underlying volumes, and forfile change logs. Version 6 was introduced in VxFS 4.0.
• Version 7 extends support for multiple volumes to permit Dynamic Storage Tiering. Dynamic Storage Tiering allows root users to move files among different volumes, allocate files to different volumes at file creation time based on policy, and independently recover volumes, without altering the namespace of the file system. Version 7 was introduced in VxFS 5.0.
• Version 8 enables support for file-level snapshots and shared extents. Version 8 was introduced in VxFS 5.1.
• Version 9 enables support for file compression, deduplication, and partition directories. Version 9 was introduced in VxFS 6.0.
• Version 10 enables support for maxlink, which permits a directory to contain more than 64K subdirectories. Version 10 was introduced in VxFS 6.1.

VxFS file system can run insingle instance mode or in aparallel access / cluster mode. The parallel mode allows for multiple servers (also known as cluster nodes) to simultaneously access the same file system. When run in this mode, VxFS is referred to asVeritas Cluster File System.

TheCluster File System provides cache coherency andPOSIX compliance across nodes, so that data changes are atomically seen by all cluster nodes simultaneously. Because Cluster File System shares the same binaries and same on-disk layout as single instance VxFS, moving between cluster and single instance mode is straightforward.

• Comparison of file systems
• Symantec Operations Readiness Tools (SORT)

• 1991 software
• Disk file systems
• Shared disk file systems
• HP software
• File systems supported by the Linux kernel

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from August 2010
• Articles with unsourced statements from April 2017