SolarisZfs

ZFS is an intelligent filesystem with in-built virtual disk management and data protection.

ZFS can manage a variety of storage resources (whole disks, partitions, files). Unlike traditional approaches where each filesystem is a static allocation of physical storage, ZFS filesystem storage is allocated as it is used. ZFS manages usage quotas as filesystem size limit. Thus ZFS favours the creation of many individual filesystems.

While an empty filesystem does not use any storage, the collective filesystems may exhaust the storage pool. It is important to plan for actual usage by allocating filesystems to appropriate storage pools and by setting filesystem size limits and possibly reservations.

Configuration

The configuration employed here, limits the number of disks in each storage pool so that, in the event of x4500 hardware failure, it remains feasible to install each storage pool into alternate hardware.

The disks are grouped into raid sets for protection from disk failure. For maximum performance, each raid set is made of one disk from each of the 6 disk controllers. Raidz2 provides protection from two simultaneous disk failures. Each raid set has access to a hot spare to automatically rebuild after a disk failure.

The storage pools are configured using two raid sets. This is a balance between total number of disks in the pool (for alternate installation) and fragmentation of storage allocation. Hot spare drives are attached to the storage pool and accessable to the raid sets within that pool.

Individual filesystems are created within a particular storage pool.

Command

To create, configure and examine storage pools, use the command.

  zpool

  typical zpool status

To create, configure and examine zfs filesystems, use the command

  zfs

  typical
      zfs create zpo