How to Determine Your ZFS File System Hierarchy

1. Pick the file system granularity.

   ZFS file systems are the central point of administration. They are lightweight and can be created easily. A good model to use is a file system per user or project, as this model allows properties, snapshots, and backups to be controlled on a per-user or per-project basis.

   Two ZFS file systems, bonwick and billm, are created in How to Create ZFS File Systems.

   For more information on managing file systems, see Chapter 6, Managing ZFS File Systems.

2. Group similar file systems.

   ZFS allows file systems to be organized into hierarchies so that similar file systems can be grouped. This model provides a central point of administration for controlling properties and administering file systems. Similar file systems should be created under a common name.

   For the example in How to Create ZFS File Systems, the two file systems are placed under a file system named home.

3. Choose the file system properties.

   Most file system characteristics are controlled by using simple properties. These properties control a variety of behavior, including where the file systems are mounted, how they are shared, if they use compression, and if any quotas are in effect.

   For the example in How to Create ZFS File Systems, all home directories are mounted at /export/zfs/user, are shared by using NFS, and with compression enabled. In addition, a quota of 10 Gbytes on bonwick is enforced.

   For more information about properties, see Introducing ZFS Properties.