You build a ZFS file system n top of a storage pool. ZFS file systems can be dynamically created and destroyed without requiring you to allocate or format any underlying disk space. Because these file systems are so lightweight and because they are the central point of administration in ZFS, you are likely to create many of them.
You can administer ZFS file systems by using the zfs command. The zfs command provides a set of subcommands that perform specific operations on file systems. This chapter describes these subcommands in detail. Snapshots, clones, and volumes are also managed by using this command, but these features are only covered briefly in this chapter. For detailed information about snapshots and clones, see Working With Oracle Solaris ZFS Snapshots and Clones. For detailed information about ZFS volumes, see ZFS Volumes.
All invocations of the zfs command require the name of the file system. The file system name is specified as a path name starting from the name of the pool as follows:
pool-name/[dataset-path]/filesystem-name
The pool name and the dataset path identify the location of the file system in the hierarchy. The last part in the name identifies the file system name. The file system name must satisfy the naming requirements in Naming ZFS Components. For example, the tank/home/jeff file system name would refer to a ZFS file system named jeff, in the /home dataset path, in the tank pool,