Jeff Bonwick

Jeff Bonwick
Occupation(s)	Computer scientist, software engineer
Known for	Creator and lead developer of ZFS file system; inventor of slab allocation; designer of LZJB compression algorithm
Notable work	ZFS file system, slab allocation, LZJB compression algorithm

Jeff Bonwick is the creator and lead developer of the ZFS file system, which is employed in storage solutions by Oracle Corporation and various startups such as Nexenta, Delphix, Joyent, and Datto, Inc. He is also credited with inventing slab allocation, a memory management technique integrated into operating systems like MacOS and Linux, as well as designing the LZJB compression algorithm.

Throughout his career, Bonwick has held prominent positions including Sun Fellow, Chief Technology Officer for Sun Storage, and vice president at Oracle.

History

In 2010, Bonwick co-established DSSD alongside Mike Shapiro and Bill Moore, taking on the role of chief technical officer. He played a key role in co-inventing DSSD’s hardware design and software systems, creating a comprehensive system simulator to analyze hardware configurations and performance algorithms. EMC Corporation acquired DSSD in 2014, which later became part of Dell Technologies in 2016. By the end of 2016, while Moore had departed, Bonwick continued as CTO. The DSSD product known as D5 was discontinued in March 2017.

LZJB

Bonwick is the developer of LZJB, a lossless data compression method aimed at reducing the size of crash dump files and data within ZFS. Distributed under the CDDL, LZJB builds upon the LZRW1 algorithm and belongs to the family of Lempel–Ziv compression techniques. Its name honors both its algorithmic heritage and its creator: Lempel Ziv Jeff Bonwick.