ZFS noob question

[MajRonin]

Hello,

I'm getting familiar with ZFS after few years using RAID 5, but i've a question for those who know : Is it possible to divide a ZFS disk into multiple partitions with defined size.

For example ZFS pool of 14 To into :

- part1 2 To
- part 2 10 To
- part 3 1 To
- part 4 500 GB
- part 5 500 GB

it's possible with RAID system, but i don't find any type of this system with RAIDZ, and in my case RAIDZ2 composed of 6 drives of 4 To each one.

thank you in advance for your(s) answer(s)

 

[leesteken]

Any ZFS pool can be split into filesystem and sub-volumes that are limited to certain sizes (and can reserve that space instead of thin provisioning).

 

[Dunuin]

ZFS isn't just raid. Its also a filesystem so you don't partition or format it. Read about "dataset", "quota" and "refreservation" if you want to limit the size of a dataset. But in most cases it is way more useful to make use of thin-provisioning so you don't waste space by using defined sizes.
Also keep in mind that 20% of a ZFS pool should always be kept free, so of your pool only 12.8TB or 11.64 TiB are actually usable. In in case you are working with zvols and don't increase your volblocksize you will loose additional capacity due to padding overhead.

 

[MajRonin]

Thank you for your answers: I will look into the matter