What's New in ZFS for Oracle Solaris

This Oracle Solaris release introduces the following ZFS features:

  • ZFS supports compressed raw send in data replication, which can replicate data by sending compressed file system blocks as-is from the disk and writing the blocks as-is to the target. The feature increases efficiency by eliminating the decompression-recompression processes in previous ZFS replication operations that used to run before the data blocks are received at the target. See the Sending ZFS Data Using Raw Transfer example in Sending a ZFS Snapshot.

  • Set bandwidth restrictions on a dataset. Such restrictions enable you to limit I/O operations on datasets to ensure that no one dataset can monopolize the bandwidth of the pool. See Setting I/O Bandwidth Limits.

  • Restart or resume a ZFS data transfer from the point at which the transfer stopped. A data transfer might be interrupted because of a network outage or ZFS server downtime. See Using Resumable Replication.

  • By default, per-block checksums are enabled when you transfer ZFS data from an Oracle Solaris 11.4 system. To transfer ZFS data to systems that do not support per-block checksums, see the Sending ZFS Data From a Oracle Solaris 11.4.0 Dataset example in Sending a ZFS Snapshot.

  • Use the zpool remove command to remove top-level devices from a ZFS pool. This feature compliments the current capabilities of removing log, cache, and hot spare devices from pools. See Removing Devices From a Storage Pool.

  • Use the clustered zpool property to globally mount a ZFS file system in an Oracle Solaris Cluster environment. See the Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.4 Documentation Library.

  • Use the zfs send command to replicate a cloned dataset in a self-contained manner that is independent from the origin dataset. See Types of ZFS Snapshot Streams.

  • Use the cp -z to copy a file more quickly. See Copying ZFS Files.

  • The clone auto-promote feature enables you to do the following:

    • Destroy datasets even if these datasets have snapshots that are clone origins. This capability makes the destruction of snapshots, shares or projects independent of any dependent clones. You can preserve these clones even after the destroy operation.

    • Directly clone datasets without having to first take a snapshot of the dataset.

    • Provide data about the disk space utilization of clones. This data shows how clones share disk space and how the space used by a clone can change as other datasets are destroyed and promoted.

  • Create policies that enable you to retain files for mandatory time periods starting in Oracle Solaris 11.4 SRU 45. See Retaining Files on Your ZFS File System.

  • Create ZFS clones and mount them under the .zfs/clone directory starting in Oracle Solaris 11.4 SRU 72. See Displaying and Accessing ZFS Clones.