Chapter 5

Managing ZFS File Systems

This chapter provides detailed information about managing Solaris^TM ZFS file systems. Concepts such as hierarchical file system layout, property inheritance, and automatic mount point management and share interactions are included in this chapter.

A ZFS file system is a lightweight POSIX file system that is built on top of a storage pool. File systems can be dynamically created and destroyed without requiring you to allocate or format any underlying space. Because file systems are so lightweight and because they are the central point of administration in ZFS, you are likely to create many of them.

ZFS file systems are administered 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, volumes, and clones 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 Chapter 6, Working With ZFS Snapshots and Clones. For detailed information about emulated volumes, see ZFS Volumes.

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Note - The term dataset is used in this chapter as a generic term to refer to a file system, snapshot, clone, or volume.

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The following sections are provided in this chapter:

• Creating and Destroying ZFS File Systems

• Introducing ZFS Properties

• Querying ZFS File System Information

• Managing ZFS Properties

• Mounting and Sharing ZFS File Systems

• ZFS Quotas and Reservations

• Saving and Restoring ZFS Data