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SERVERware 4 ZFS Storage engine

SERVERware 4 ZFS Storage engine

SERVERware storage is implemented using OpenZFS as a storage engine. OpenZFS is a storage
the platform that encompasses the functionality of traditional filesystems and volume managers,
delivering enterprise reliability, modern functionality, and consistent performance.


The features and benefits of OpenZFS include protection against data corruption, support for high
storage capacities, efficient data compression, integrity checking and automatic repair, snapshots,
copy-on-write clones, RAID-Z, and native NFSv4 ACLs.


Additional features include variable block sizes, cache management, deduplication, explicit I/O
priority with deadline scheduling, intelligent scrubbing and resilvering (resyncing), and support for
per-user and per-group quotas among other things.


OpenZFS is designed for long term storage of data, with zero data loss, and with high configurability,
scalability.


While traditional filesystems reside on a single device, OpenZFS filesystems are built on top of virtual
storage pools called zpools.


OpenZFS has native handling of snapshots and backup/replication. OpenZFS can quickly and
routinely take efficient snapshots of the data system, several times an hour.


OpenZFS uses a copy-on-write principle. When OpenZFS writes new data, old data can be retained,
thus allowing a snapshot version of the file system to be maintained. ZFS snapshots are created very
quickly and are also space-efficient since all snapshot data is already stored and any unchanged data
is shared among the file system and its snapshots.


Clones (writeable snapshots) can also be created. Clones share a set of blocks. When changes are
made to any of the clone file systems, new data blocks are created but any unchanged blocks
continue to be shared.

You can also read more details on ZFS in our blog