Features

Encryption

Snapshots

Send+Receive

ACLs

Compression

• Transparent
• Algorithms
  • lz4
    • High-speed compression with a balance of performance and ratio.
    • General-purpose workloads, logs, databases, etc.
  • lzjb
    • Older algorithm, predecessor of lz4
    • Legacy systems or backward compatibility.
  • zle
    • Compresses zero-filled blocks.
    • Virtual machine images and datasets with zero-filled blocks.
  • gzip
    • Offers compression levels from gzip-1 to gzip-9, with varying performance.
    • Archival data, backups, where storage efficiency is critical.
  • zstd
    • Newer algorithm, faster than gzip with better ratios.
    • Suitable for archival data and large files.

lz4 for most stuff, zstd for archival

sudo zfs set compression=lz4 mypool

zfs get compression,compressratio mypool

Deduplication

• Uses lots of memory
  • Checks entire deduplication table (DDT)
  • ~5GB RAM/1TB deduplicated data
• Adds complexity
  • Irreversible
  • DDT continues to grow as data added

sudo zfs set dedup=on mypool