explaingit

openzfs/zfs

★ 12,193CAudience · ops devopsComplexity · 5/5Setup · hard

TLDR

OpenZFS is a file system and storage manager for Linux and FreeBSD that combines multiple disks into pools, protects data from silent corruption, and supports snapshots, from home servers to enterprise storage.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((repo))
    What it does
      File system
      Storage pools
      Data protection
    Platforms
      Linux kernels
      FreeBSD releases
    Features
      Disk pooling
      Snapshots
      Integrity checks
    Use cases
      Home NAS
      Server storage
      Enterprise data
    Audience
      Sysadmins
      DevOps engineers
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Code map

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filefunction / class

Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Create a ZFS storage pool from multiple disks on a Linux server with automatic data integrity checking.

USE CASE 2

Configure automatic ZFS snapshots on a FreeBSD server for fast, space-efficient backups you can roll back to.

USE CASE 3

Run OpenZFS on Ubuntu LTS as the file system for a home NAS or self-hosted server.

Tech stack

CLinuxFreeBSD

Getting it running

Difficulty · hard Time to first run · 1h+

Installation instructions are in external documentation, your kernel version must match the supported list for your Linux distribution.

Open-source license with specific terms in the repository's LICENSE and NOTICE files, check those files for commercial use conditions.

In plain English

A file system is the part of an operating system that controls how data is stored on and retrieved from disks and other storage devices. OpenZFS is a file system and volume manager, meaning it handles both how data is organized on disk and how storage devices are managed together as pools. It was originally developed for Solaris, an operating system created at Sun Microsystems, and is now maintained by an open-source community. This repository contains the code for running OpenZFS specifically on Linux and FreeBSD. The README notes that OpenZFS also targets other platforms including illumos, macOS, and Windows through the broader OpenZFS organization, though those are separate from this repository. The project's documentation site covers the full scope of features and use cases, while this repository focuses on the Linux and FreeBSD implementations. Conference recordings and community information are available at the main OpenZFS organization site. On Linux, OpenZFS supports long-term stable kernel versions: currently 5.10, 5.15, 6.1, 6.6, 6.12, and 6.18. Supported Linux distributions include Red Hat Enterprise Linux and compatible variants such as AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux on full or maintenance support tracks, Ubuntu LTS releases, and Debian stable and LTS releases. On FreeBSD, all releases currently receiving security support from the FreeBSD project are supported. Installation instructions are in the official OpenZFS documentation rather than in the README itself, which is brief and mostly a pointer to external resources. The project is released under the CDDL license, an open-source license whose specific terms are detailed in the repository's license and notice files.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Walk me through creating a ZFS RAID-Z pool from four disks on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS step by step.
Prompt 2
Set up automatic daily ZFS snapshots on my Linux server and show me the commands to roll back to a previous snapshot.
Prompt 3
Install OpenZFS on Rocky Linux 9 and create a mirrored pool to store Docker volumes with data redundancy.
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