[$] Accessing zoned block devices with zonefs
Zoned block devices are quite different than the block devices most people
are used to. The concept came from shingled
magnetic recording (SMR) devices, which allow much higher density
storage, but that extra capacity comes with a price: less flexibility. Zoned
devices have regions (zones) that can only be written sequentially; there
is no random access for writes to those zones. Linux already supports these
devices, and filesystems are adding support as well, but some applications
may want a simpler, more straightforward interface; that's what a new
filesystem, zonefs, is targeting.