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Background
There are three levels to understand
- zpools are a JBOD of one or more vdevs
- vdevs are groups of drives, likely in raidz(2|3) or mirror.
- datasets are filesystems stored on a zpool
- z
Usage
# Create a zpool with a mirror vdev
zpool create -f -o ashift=12 $zpool_name mirror \
/dev/disk/by-id/diskA \
/dev/disk/by-id/diskB
Pros and Cons
VS Snapraid + btrfs + mergerfs
- Pros
- ZFS has realtime parity.
- ZFS can work while degraded.
- ZFS snapshots with send and receive.
- ZFS has encryption on per-dataset.
- ZFS handles everything altogether including parity on permissions
- Cons
- The main con is that ZFS is less expandable. You need to buy all of your drives up front.
- If many drives die, i.e. >2 for raidz2, you lose all your data.
Resources