OpenZFS Native Encryption
Beginning with version 13.0, FreeBSD supports the long-anticipated OpenZFS native encryption. If you’ve used FreeBSD’s GELI encryption in the past, you may wonder if switching to OpenZFS native encryption makes sense.
Check out the differences between GELI encryption and OpenZFS native encryption, and the main benefits of native encryption, let’s take a look at how to create an encrypted database and reroot to an encrypted database.
Demystifying OpenZFS 2.0
OpenZFS 2.0 has been released for a while now and, needless to say, FreeBSD 13 was shipped with OpenZFS 2.0. However, there are still questions about how the change from feature flags happened and why version 2.0 of OpenZFS was decided.
With this article, we’re hoping to clear the air around the release of OpenZFS 2.0.
Advanced ZFS Snapshots
In our previous articles, we introduced you to the basics of ZFS snapshot management, and explained concepts such as creating OpenZFS snapshots, restoring files from a snapshot, and deleting snapshots.
With this article, we dive a bit deeper into OpenZFS snapshot management with snapshot holds, clone creation and promotion, and assigning permissions to snapshot-related operations.
Choosing the right ZFS pool layout
Setting up a ZFS pool involves a number of permanent decisions that will affect the performance, cost, and reliability of your data storage systems, so you really want to understand all the options at your disposal for making the right choices from the beginning.
Let’s talk about mirror vdevs, RAID-Z or dRAID to better understand real redundant data storage.
History of ZFS – Part 3: Heading Into the Future
In our last entry of the “History of ZFS” series we look to the future of OpenZFS.
After documenting and thoroughly analysing the events that shaped OpenZFS as we know it today, let’s talk about what future features you should look forward to and just how things are shaping.
History of ZFS – Part 2: Exploding in Popularity
From its birth at Sun, ZFS grew exponentially in popularity. Many were impressed by its revolutionary features, and ported it to run on their systems. Find out how more about its journey and the rise of OpenZFS in the second part of our series.
Getting Started with OpenZFS 2.0
FreeBSD 13.0 imported OpenZFS 2.0 replacing the bespoke port that had served since 2007. The FreeBSD installer has an interface allowing ZFS as the root file system, allowing a bootable FreeBSD system on ZFS. Selecting the guided root on ZFS, install will permit graphical selection of disks to include in a pool.
This is an easy way to explore ZFS features without an extensive hardware investment.
This article will introduce new users to ZFS, and cover some of the new features in the upgrade.
FreeBSD iostat – A Quick Glance
Understanding disk io at a glance with the FreeBSD iostat. Use iostat to determine usage patterns, bottlenecks and poor behavior at a glance. It can produce data to support conclusions and suggest further investigation when used judiciously. In this article, we will dissect its output and introduce disk subsystem troubleshooting using statistical output from iostat.
History of ZFS – Part 1: The Birth of ZFS
Since its early days, ZFS has quickly developed into a robust and proven file system for long-term, large-scale data storage. The trustworthy file system also comes with an interesting story. Find out how the idea of ZFS was born, how it was developed and who stood by it, in our latest write-up.
dRAID, Finally!
Distributed RAID is a new vdev type that complements existing ZFS data protection capabilities for large storage arrays. With the release of OpenZFS 2.1, draid will be supported on OpenZFS, and this is exciting news as it brings integrated distributed hot spares, allowing for faster resilvering and better performances for data protection. Dive into an interesting read and find out what options dRAID offers.