Re: ZFS Competition ;Hierarchal Storage Management?
It would seem that you are right. Apple wrote a Volume Manager called Core Storage for Lion, but until now only used it for full volume encryption though it is capable of more:
"Apple goes a step further than most volume managers, however, with the introduction of a new concept, the “logical volume family” (LVF). The LVF specifies properties that will be inherited by logical volumes that it contains. Currently, the only property specified by an LVF is FileVault encryption, but one can imagine that performance characteristics or redundancy could also be specified in this manner.
"Now two versions later, Lion includes all of the basic technology needed to effectively manage storage volumes. It is likely that the GUI simply lags behind this core technology, and we will see additional functionality added in later operating system revisions."
http://blog.fosketts.net/2011/08/04/mac-osx-lion-corestorage-volume-manager/