From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Mon May 3 02:53:52 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EFC4C106564A for ; Mon, 3 May 2010 02:53:52 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from morganw@chemikals.org) Received: from warped.bluecherry.net (warped.bluecherry.net [66.138.159.247]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C7DBF8FC1D for ; Mon, 3 May 2010 02:53:52 +0000 (UTC) Received: from volatile.chemikals.org (adsl-67-123-77.shv.bellsouth.net [98.67.123.77]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (Client did not present a certificate) by warped.bluecherry.net (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 19A1C87DAD3F; Sun, 2 May 2010 21:36:06 -0500 (CDT) Received: from localhost (morganw@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by volatile.chemikals.org (8.14.4/8.14.4) with ESMTP id o432a0gj086238; Sun, 2 May 2010 21:36:00 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from morganw@chemikals.org) Date: Sun, 2 May 2010 21:36:00 -0500 (CDT) From: Wes Morgan X-X-Sender: morganw@volatile To: Eric Damien In-Reply-To: <201005021536.05389.jafa82@gmail.com> Message-ID: References: <201005021536.05389.jafa82@gmail.com> User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (BSF 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Virus-Scanned: clamav-milter 0.95.3 at warped X-Virus-Status: Clean Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: ZFS: separate pools X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 03 May 2010 02:53:53 -0000 On Sun, 2 May 2010, Eric Damien wrote: > Hello list. > > I am taking my first steps with ZFS. In the past, I used to have two UFS > slices: one dedicated to the o.s. partitions, and the second to data (/home, > etc.). I read on that it was possible to recreate that logic with zfs, using > separate pools. > > Considering the example of > http://wiki.freebsd.org/RootOnZFS/GPTZFSBoot, > any idea how I can adapt that to my needs? I am concerned about all the > different mountpoints. Well, you need not create all those filesystems if you don't want them. The pool and FreeBSD will function just fine. However, as far as storage is concerned, there is no disadvantage to having additional mount pounts. The only limits each filesystem will have is a limit you explicitly impose. There are many advantages, though. Some datasets are inherently compressible or incompressible. Other datasets you may not want to schedule for snapshots, or allow files to be executed, suid, checksummed, block sizes, you name it (as the examples in the wiki demonstrate). Furthermore, each pool requires its own vdev. If you create slices on a drive and then make each slice its own pool, I would wonder if zfs's internal queuing would understand the topology and be able to work as efficiently. Just a thought, though.