Accessing zoned block devices with zonefs

The use case for these things is basically write-rarely data. The devices are larger than the available non-shingled drives but can't really be used in the same way (or at least not efficiently).

And yes, you must write an entire zone at once. But the devices generally have a region which accepts random writes (or are paired with another device which serves that function), so you can potentially accumulate a zone's worth of data over time and then move that to a zone all at once. There is plenty of room for smart filesystems here.