Submitted by: Prabhakar Jaiswal

Employee ID: 818089

Enterprise Services
ZFS
Introduction to the ZFS File System
Objectives
Describe the Solaris ZFS file system
Create new ZFS pools and file systems
Modify ZFS file system properties
Mount and unmount ZFS file systems
Destroy ZFS pools and file systems

What Is ZFS?
ZFS Snapshots
ZFS snapshots are read-only copies of file systems
that initially consume no additional space in apool.

Simplified Administration
ZFS uses a simplified command set, uses an
hierarchical file system layout, supports file system
property inheritance and automatic mount points.
ZFS Terminology

dataset - A generic name for the
following ZFS entities:
clones, file systems, snapshots, or volumes.
mirror - A virtual device that stores
identical copies of data on two or more
disks.
pool - A logical group of devices describing the layout
and physical characteristics of the available storage.

RAID-Z - A virtual device that stores data and parity
on multiple disks, similar to RAID-5.

resilvering -The process of transferring data from one
device to another device is known as resilvering.

snapshot - A read-only image of a file system or
volume at a given point in time.

virtual device - A logical device in a pool, which can be
a physical device, a file, or a collection of devices.

volume - A dataset used to emulate a physical device.
ZFS Component Naming
Requirements
Empty components are not allowed.
Each component can only contain alphanumeric
characters in addition to the following four
special characters:
Underscore (_)
Hyphen (-)
Colon (:)
Period (.)
Pool names must begin with a letter, except
that the beginning
sequence c[0-9] is not allowed. In addition,
pool names that begin with mirror, raidz,
or spare are not allowed as these name
are reserved.
Dataset names must begin with an
alphanumeric character.
The minimum disk size is 128 Mbytes.
For good ZFS performance, at least one Gbyte or
more of memory is recommended.
Creating ZFS File Systems
One goal of the ZFS design is to reduce the number of
commands needed to create a usable file system.
When you create a new pool, a new ZFS file system is
created and mounted automatically.
Within a pool, you will probably want to create additional
file systems.
In most cases, you will probably want to create and
organize a hierarchy of file systems that matches your
organizationalneeds.
A storage device can be a whole disk
(c1t0d0) or an
individual slice (c0t0d0s7).
The recommended mode of operation is to
use an entire disk.
ZFS applies an EFI label when you create a
storage pool with
whole disks
mirror c1t0d0 c2t0d0

Creating a Basic Storage Pool
The following command creates a new
pool named tank that
consists of the disk c1t0d0
# zpool create tank c1t0d0
You can request specific statistics by using
the -o option.
For example, to list only the name and size
of each pool, you use the following
syntax:
# zpool list -o name,size
NAME SIZE
tank 80.0G
dozer 1.2T
The simplest way to request a quick
overview of pool health status is to use
the zpool status command:
# zpool status -x
all pools are healthy
ONLINE The device is in normal working order.

DEGRADED The virtual device has experienced failure but is still
able to function.

FAULTED The virtual device is completely inaccessible. This
status typically indicates total failure of the device, such that
ZFS is incapable of sending or receiving data from it.
If a top-level virtual device is in this state, then the pool is
completely inaccessible.

OFFLINE The virtual device has been explicitly taken offline by
the administrator.

UNAVAILABLE The device or virtual device cannot be opened.
In some cases, pools with UNAVAILABLE devices appear in
DEGRADED mode. If a top-level virtual device
is unavailable, then nothing in the pool can be accessed.
zfs create tank/home/bonwick
ZFS automatically mounts the newly created
file system if it is created successfully.
Renaming a ZFS File System (cont.)
The following example uses the rename
subcommand to simply rename a file system:
# zfs rename tank/home/kustarz
tank/home/kustarz_old
The following example shows how to use zfs
rename to
relocate a file system.
# zfs rename tank/home/maybee
tank/ws/maybee
# zfs set mountpoint=legacy
tank/home/eschrock
# mount -F zfs tank/home/eschrock
/mnt
The zfs mount command with no argument
shows all currently mounted file systems
that are managed by ZFS.
# zfs mount
tank /tank
tank/home /tank/home
tank/home/bonwick /tank/home/bonwick
You can use the -a option to mount all ZFS
managed file
systems. For example:
# zfs mount -a
This command does not mount legacy
managed file systems.
ZFS Snapshots
A snapshot is a read-only copy of a file system or volume.
Snapshots are created almost instantly, and initially
consume no additional disk space within the pool.

ZFS snapshots include the following features:
Snapshots persist across system reboots.
The theoretical maximum number of snapshots is 264.
Snapshots use no separate backing store. Snapshots
consume disk space directly from the same storage
pool as the file system from which they were created.
Creating and Destroying ZFS Snapshots
You use the zfs snapshot command to create ZFS
snapshots. The zfs snapshot command takes the name of
the snapshot to create as its only argument.
Snapshot names use the following format:
filesystem@snapname
volume@snapname
The following example creates a snapshot of tank/home/
ahrens that is named friday.
# zfs snapshot tank/home/ahrens@friday
You use the zfs destroy command to destroy
a ZFS
snapshot. For example:
# zfs destroy
tank/home/ahrens@friday
Adataset cannot be destroyed if snapshots
of the dataset exist.

The End