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ZFS: Restore a filesystem from a snapshot backup

Contributed by qmchenry on June 14, 2006 under Solaris system administration

ZFS snapshots provide point-in-time backups of filesystems which utilize minimal disk space and CPU load. This, combined with the fact that you can make billions of billions of snapshots, makes taking frequent backups of filesystems a realistic possibility. This recipe describes restoring a filesystem from a snapshot.

ZFS: Create a snapshot of a filesystem

Contributed by qmchenry on under Solaris system administration

Of the many cool features of the new ZFS filesystems, one of the coolest is taking snapshots of a live filesystem. This provides a read-only point-in-time copy of the whole filesystem. While this sounds slow and expensive in disk usage, ZFS makes snapshots efficient in time and space.

ZFS: Create a raidz filesystem

Contributed by qmchenry on June 6, 2006 under Solaris system administration

ZFS supports a type of RAID-5 redundancy called raidz. This redundancy works at the ZFS pool level and affects all created filesystems in that pool. According to the Sun docs, raidz offers ‘better distribution of parity [than RAID-5] and eliminates the “RAID-5 write hole” (in which data and parity become inconsistent after a power loss).’ Creating RAID volumes in most volume managers (like VeritasVM) requires learning a new language describing the various components involved. ZFS requires one wee command.

ZFS: Destroy or remove one or more filesystems

Contributed by qmchenry on under Solaris system administration

If you no longer want a filesystem or hierarchy of filesystems, ZFS offers a (possibly too) easy mechanism for removing them. The destroy option of the zfs command unshares, unmounts, and obliterates filesystems.

ZFS: Grow or add more disk space to pool or filesystem

Contributed by qmchenry on under Solaris system administration

Run out of disk space on your production server? Cringe at the downtime required to bring filesystems offline, backup, create bigger filesystems, and restore all the while typing with crossed fingers? Dread deciding the disk layout for your new server? Don’t panic! ZFS has you covered. In one simple command, you can add space to a ZFS pool without taking it offline.

ZFS: reserve space for filesystem

Contributed by qmchenry on June 5, 2006 under Solaris system administration

Descendent (child) filesystems in ZFS take on the carachteristics of the parent filesystem (compression, quotas, and available disk space). The pool concept in ZFS is fitting – a hard drive (or several) becomes a pool. We no longer have to define the exact size of a filesystem when we create it. Each filesystem has access to the same pool of space. However, if is simple to reserve a minimum amount of space for a filesystem and its decendents.

ZFS: Set or change the mount point of a filesystem

Contributed by qmchenry on under Solaris system administration

Creating new ZFS filesystems may seem strange at first since they are initially mounted under their parent filesystem. This is no problem since ZFS provides a simple and powerful mechanism for setting the mount point for a filesystem.

ZFS: List or view filesystems

Contributed by qmchenry on under Solaris system administration

It is worth repeating the distinction between ZFS pools and filesystems. A ZFS filesystem cannot exist outside of a ZFS pool. Creating a ZFS pool also creates a ZFS filesystem of the same name. Understanding the second part can help avoid confusion. This recipe describes the simple step to list the ZFS filesystems configured on the system.

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