Getting Started

Everything you hate about managing file systems and volumes is gone: you don't have to format, newfs, mount, edit /etc/vfstab, fsck, growfs, metadb, metainit, etc.

Meet your new best friends: zpool(1M) and zfs(1M).  

ZFS is easy, so let's get on with it!  It's time to create your first pool: 

 # zpool create tank mirror c1t2d0 c2t2d0 

Create the /var/mail file system:

# zfs create tank/mail
# zfs set mountpoint=/var/mail tank/mail

                        
Create home directories and mount them all in /export/home/<username>:

# zfs create tank/home
# zfs set mountpoint=/export/home tank/home
# zfs create tank/home/ahrens
# zfs create tank/home/billm
# zfs create tank/home/bonwick
# zfs create tank/home/eschrock

ZFS file systems are hierarchical: each one inherits properties from above. In this example, the mountpoint property is inherited as a pathname prefix. That is, tank/home/ahrens is automatically mounted at /export/home/ahrens because tank/home is mounted at /export/home. You don't have to specify the mountpoint for each individual user. You just tell ZFS the pattern.

This is how we actually set up home directory and mail service on zion.eng, which has been running ZFS for over a year and a half.

But wait, there's more!

ZFS provides built-in compression. To compress all home directories:

# zfs set compression=on tank/home

To give ahrens a 10G quota:

# zfs set quota=10g tank/home/ahrens

To give bonwick a 100G reservation (membership has its privileges):

# zfs set reservation=100g tank/home/bonwick

To automatically NFS-share all home directories read/write:

# zfs set sharenfs=rw tank/home

To scrub all disks and verify the integrity of all data in the pool:

# zpool scrub tank

To replace a flaky disk:

# zpool replace tank c2t2d0 c4t1d0

                           
To add more space:

# zpool add tank c5t1d0 c6t1d0

To move your pool from SPARC machine 'sparky' to AMD machine 'amdy':

    [on sparky]
        # zpool export tank                                                     

Physically move your disks from sparky to amdy.

    [on amdy]
        # zpool import tank                                                     

Everything will just work. ZFS has 'adaptive endianness' to cope with different byte order on different platforms.

You get the idea: it's simple. Any common ZFS operation can be done with a single short command.

For More Information

You can find more information at the documentation section. You can also join the ZFS discussion at zfs-discuss AT opensolaris DOT org.

Give it a spin and let us know what you think!