| ZFS Solution Briefs and Education |
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This document started as an explanation of the term “copy on write” as it applies to ZFS, but the foundational concepts relevant to that discussion are equally applicable to many other great features of ZFS as well, so this paper was expanded and then broken apart to cover a broader selection of ZFS highlights often described in a whiteboard session. We recommend reading the following ZFS white papers in order from first to last as illustrated below: 1. NexentaStor: ZFS Copy-on-Write, Checksums, and ConsistencyThis first paper in a series starts with three necessary concepts, and the subsequent papers build upon this beginning. 2. NexentaStor: ZFS Snapshots and ReplicationThis second paper builds upon the first by describing how ZFS handles snapshots and replication differently from most traditional storage vendors. Read first: NexentaStor: ZFS Copy-on-Write, Checksums, and Consistency 3. NexentaStor: ZFS Initialization and ResilveringThis third paper builds upon the first two by describing how ZFS handles initialization of RAID sets and resilvering after disk failures differently from most traditional storage vendors. Read first: NexentaStor: ZFS Snapshots and Replication 4. NexentaStor: An Introduction to ZFS's Hybrid Storage PoolThis fourth paper builds upon the first two by describing how ZFS handles hybrid storage infrastructures differently from most traditional storage vendors. Read first: NexentaStor: ZFS Initialization and Resilvering 5. NexentaStor: Auto-Tiered StorageZFS hybrid storage pools intelligently combine DRAM, flash, and hard disk drives to achieve the right balance of cost and performance for any given working set, while reducing the need for administrators to constantly monitor storage for I/O bottlenecks. Read first: NexentaStor: ZFS Initialization and Resilvering |