Interesting discussion. I've often been impressed at how NetApp-like the overal ZFS feature-set is (implies that I like NetApp's). Is it verboten to compare ZFS to NetApp? I hope not....
NetApp has two ways of making snapshots. There is a set of automatic snapshots, which are created, rotate and expire on their own (i.e. the filer does all of this). Often you'll have a number of hourly, daily, weekly, etc. snapshots in this category. These are the ones that users can count on seeing when they seek to perform a self-recovery of a mistakenly damaged file. Then you have the ones you create manually, or which are created by backup software. The filer itself will never delete these, it's up to the external creator to manage them. This has proven to be a fantastic model for the usage patterns that I have experienced (over probably 6+ years of NetApp use), and I would like to see something similar available for ZFS. Personally, I think that having an expiration time (and creation) be associated with the snapshot/pool itself is a good thing. What happens if one exports said filesystem/pool (with snapshots) to another system, if such creation/expiration is handled by some outside utility? Hmm, I'm not sure if the NetApp auto-snapshot schedule follows a disk volume if it's exported to a different filer. I think it doesn't. Regards, Marion _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
