We have done a backport of NEXT3 filesystem kernel module for RHEL 5 OpenVZ enabled kernel included in OpenNode - both next3 kernel module and patched (+ newer version of) e2fsprogs rpm packages are now available from opennode-dev-next3 repo for testing.

NEXT3(R) is a clone of the Ext3 filesystem with built-in support for snapshots.

NEXT3 features

• Backward and forward compatible with Ext3 - converting from EXT3 to NEXT3 and back is easy and possible
• Snapshots use available file system disk space - no need for dedicated free disk blocks like LVM
• No upper limit on number or size of snapshots - no need for snapshot size pre-allocation like LVM
• Minimal performance overhead when snapshots exists