tl;dr:

This is a quick email to let everyone know, as previously communicated [0], we are now planning to delete the "garden-shed" filesystem driver (and, thereby, support for aufs) in the next garden release. The new overlayfs-based driver ("grootfs") has been the default for several months and has been running significant load without reported problems. Additionally, the old aufs-based driver is incompatible with the latest Xenial-based stemcells, and therefore with the latest cf-deployment releases.

[0]: https://lists.cloudfoundry.org/g/cf-dev/message/8093?p=,,,20,0,0,0::Created,,shed,20,2,0,22676842

Background: 

Several months ago, the garden team determined that our existing aufs-based driver would be difficult to support with newer operating system versions (since it relied on an out-of-kernel module, Aufs). We created a new driver, grootfs ("Garden ROOTFS manger"), based on the new in-kernel "overlay" feature. This driver has been the default driver in garden for several months, and has been running in numerous environments. We now believe all users are using the new driver. Since it is now incompatible with the latest stemcell, we plan to remove the garden-shed driver entirely in the next garden release.

Action Required:

None, unless you are still opting back in to the old, "garden-shed" driver, in which case please urgently test with grootfs (you can do this by simply removing the `deprecated_use_garden_shed` bosh property from your manifest and deploying.. after this deploys successfully, we recommend either recreating your cells or deploying an updated stemcell to clean up any files from the old driver) and let us know you need more time! We're happy to help in the #garden channel on slack or by reply to this email address.

Julz - Garden PM, on behalf of the Garden team