ZFS Primer for Solaris 11.3

ZFS Primer for Solaris 11.3

What is ZFS?

ZFS is a flattened Volume Management & File System infrastructure that takes care of just about any basic OS needs. With 32 bit filesystems running out of steam, ZFS was created as a 128 bit filesystem to last for the

What are the features?

Basic features include:
- basic file system
- multiple file systems sharing a single pool of storage
- concatenation/striping to extend pools of storage
- mirroring to protect pools of storage
- hot-sparing of storage
- RAID to affordably protect a pool of storage (should use battery backup)
- RAIDZ to affordably protect a pool of storage (without battery backup)
- automatic silent data corruption correction
- on-line silent data corruption search & correction
- double Parity RAID to survive a dual disk failure
- snapshot, for read-only point-in-time data consistency
- scheduled snapshots, to provide rollback from user level data corruption 
- diff, to determine differences between snapshots
- clones, to make snapshots read-write
- promotion, to make a clone the record of reference
- rollback, to restore a snapshot to become the record of reference
- send, to backup a pool or filesystem to an alternate location
- receive, to restore a pool or filesystem from an alternate location
- deduplication, to make it an exquisite repository for massive VM repositories
- compression, to speed I/O and store more data
- encryption, to secure data
- sharing storage over NFS natively
- sharing storage over CIFS natively
- sharing storage over iSCSI natively

Is it Stable?

It was introduced in 2005, very stable.

Where is it used?

It is used as the default file system for Solaris 11, newer Operating Systems, storage appliances, and was even introduced into older operating systems (like Solaris 10 or Linux) as optional root disk storage.

Where can I find out more?

In December 2016, Fujitsu released a document called the "ZFS Implementation and Operations Guide". It is about the best introduction to ZFS that this author had ever seen. It is well worth the read!