ZFS docs / info

[Andrew Hill]

Ivan Voras wrote:
 > Do you know about http://wiki.freebsd.org/ZFS ?

Yes, that was my starting point as I learnt about ZFS. I simply wanted  
to offer documentation aimed at a different level of user.

I found that the documentation on that wiki and the docs it links to  
tended to fit into one of three categories
1. it provided a very high level listing of features of the whole  
system, without talking about specific components, what each one is  
responsible for and how they fit together (e.g. is the zpool or the  
zfs responsible for checksumming, compression, redundancy, etc) -  
great for convincing people of the worth of ZFS
2. it assumes the reader has full knowledge of how the zfs pieces fit  
together (i.e. they what they want to create and when) and was simply  
there to document the syntax of the zpool and zfs commands - a good  
quick-reference guide for those familiar with zfs
3. it provided very detailed information about commands, which must of  
course include how to use every single component available to ZFS, a  
lot of which is far beyond what a typical 'home' bsd user would want,  
and perhaps confusing due to the level of detail - but perfect for an  
engineer or administrator

Obviously the right documentation for a specific user really depends  
on their background knowledge, and I felt that the first category was  
great for convincing someone to use ZFS, but if they knew nothing of  
how the pieces fit together then 2 and 3 were a very deep pool to dive  
into. So I've tried to summarise the info I found from all three into  
a simpler document aimed somewhere in between high-level-overview and  
detailed-man-pages, containing what I found most useful from the  
documentation available

I don't imagine anyone who's actually bothered to sign up to freebsd- 
fs will want documentation at the level I've written it (they'll be  
going for #2 or 3 above), but I figured those trying to find out how  
it fits together might stumble across the archives, or maybe someone  
involved in documentation will see some utility (for new zfs users) in  
what i've written.

Andrew