ZFS Server File System
What is unique about ZFS?
In a lot of the documentation that you might read on ZFS you will find the word ‘pool’. I found one good analogy for the ZFS pool.
‘By comparison, when you have a server and you want to upgrade its memory, the process is pretty straightforward. You power down the server, plug in some DIMMs, power it back on, and you’re done. You don’t run dimmconfig, you don’t edit /etc/dimmtab, and you don’t create virtual DIMMs that you mount on applications. The memory is simply a pooled resource that’s managed by the operating system on behalf of the application. If Firefox wants another megabyte of memory, it asks for it, and if it’s available, it gets it. When it’s done, it frees it, and back it goes into the pool for other applications to use. It’s a very simple, very natural way of thinking about storage.With ZFS, we asked this question: why can’t your on-disk storage be the same way? That’s exactly what we do in ZFS. We have a pooled storage model. The disks are like DIMMs, and the file systems are like applications. You add devices into the storage pool, and now the file system is no longer tied to the concept of a physical disk. It grabs data from the pool as it needs to store your files, and as you remove or delete your files, it releases that storage back to the pool for other file systems to use. Again, it’s a very natural, very simple way to administer large quantities of data.’
What are the advantages of ZFS?
- Easy to add additional drive space to your system without going into RAID configurations.- ZFS has snapshot support; this is usually on top end enterprise storage units. Useful if you are working on projects that need to have previous file versions logged and saved.
- ZFS can recognize the difference between different storage types. So if you have expensive high performance Solid State Drives ZFS can use this to hold data that is accessed regularly and for data that is accessed frequently ZFS will have this data stored on cheaper lower performing larger hard disk drives. This makes for a hybrid system that makes the most of economical needs.
A lot of the advantages of ZFS seem to be leaned towards large enterprises where many disks are used and added on a regular basis. Not so much for the home user.
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Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/operating-systems-articles/zfs-server-file-system-865450.html
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