ZFS boot

[Freddie Cash]

On 10/11/08, Matthew Dillon <dillon at apollo.backplane.com> wrote:
>     With regards to the traditional BSD partitioning scheme, having a
>     separate /usr, /home, /tmp, etc... there's no reason to do that stuff
>     any more with ZFS (or HAMMER).

As separate partitions, no.  As separate filesystems, definitely.

While HAMMER PFSes may not support these things yet, ZFS allows you to
tailor each filesystem to its purpose.  For example, you can enable
compression on /usr/ports, but have a separate /usr/ports/distfilles
and /usr/ports/work that aren't compressed.  Or /usr/src compressed
and /usr/obj not.  Have a small record (block) size for /usr/src, but
a larger one for /home.  Give each user a separate filesystem for
their /home/<username>, with separate snapshot policies, quotas, and
reservations (initial filesystem size).

Creating new filesystems with ZFS is as simple as "zfs create -o
mountpoint=/wherever pool/fsname".   If you put a little time into
planning the hierarchy/structure,  you can take advantage off the
properties inheritance features of ZFS as well.

>    You just need one, and can break it
>     down into separate management domains within the filesystem
>     (e.g. HAMMER PFS's).

Similar kind of idea.

>     Most linux dists don't bother with multiple partitions any more.
>     They just have '/' and maybe a small boot partition, and that's it.

Heh, that's more proof of the difficulties inherent with old-school
disk partitioning, compared to pooled storage setups, than an
endorsement of using a single partition/filesystem.  :)

-- 
Freddie Cash
fjwcash at gmail.com