Understanding ZFS Channel Programs
One of the newer OpenZFS features that became available with FreeBSD 12.0 is ZFS Channel Programs. This article addresses questions to clarify what a ZFS channel program is, why you should use it, what are the operations supported by channel programs, or what a channel program looks like. Follow our guide and resources to learn how to create your own Channel Programs.
Achieving RPO/RTO Objectives with ZFS
Today, let’s talk a little bit less about technology itself, and a little bit more about business management. There are a couple of key management terms that every system administrator and IT professional should know and love—RPO and RTO, or Recovery Point Objective and Recovery Time Objective.
Once we understand the meaning and importance of RTO and RPO, we will take a look at two ZFS technologies—snapshots and replication—which greatly ease their management.
Let’s Talk OpenZFS Snapshots
Understanding which data benefits from being in a snapshot and how long it makes sense to keep snapshots will help you get the most out of OpenZFS snapshots. Pruning snapshots to just the ones you need will make it easier to find the data you want to restore, save disk capacity, and prevent performance bottlenecks on your OpenZFS system.
Introduction to ZFS Replication
Replication is an OpenZFS feature that really ups the data management game, providing a mechanism for handling a hardware failure with minimal data loss and downtime. Fortunately, replication itself is easy to configure and understand. In this article we’ll keep things simple, and practice replicating small amounts of data to a virtual machine.
Basics of ZFS Snapshot Management
One of the many powerful features of OpenZFS are snapshots. OpenZFS stands out in its snapshot design, providing powerful and easy-to-use tools for managing snapshots. Snapshots complement a backup strategy, as they are instantaneous and don’t require a backup window. Since snapshots are atomic, they are not affected by other processes and you don’t have to stop any running applications before taking a snapshot.
In this article we’ll start with the basics: creating, using, and deleting file system snapshots.