'\" te .\" Copyright (c) 2012, 2015 by Delphix. All rights reserved. .\" Copyright (c) 2013 by Saso Kiselkov. All rights reserved. .\" Copyright (c) 2014, Joyent, Inc. All rights reserved. .\" The contents of this file are subject to the terms of the Common Development .\" and Distribution License (the "License"). You may not use this file except .\" in compliance with the License. You can obtain a copy of the license at .\" usr/src/OPENSOLARIS.LICENSE or http://www.opensolaris.org/os/licensing. .\" .\" See the License for the specific language governing permissions and .\" limitations under the License. When distributing Covered Code, include this .\" CDDL HEADER in each file and include the License file at .\" usr/src/OPENSOLARIS.LICENSE. If applicable, add the following below this .\" CDDL HEADER, with the fields enclosed by brackets "[]" replaced with your .\" own identifying information: .\" Portions Copyright [yyyy] [name of copyright owner] .TH ZPOOL-FEATURES 5 "Aug 27, 2013" .SH NAME zpool\-features \- ZFS pool feature descriptions .SH DESCRIPTION .sp .LP ZFS pool on\-disk format versions are specified via "features" which replace the old on\-disk format numbers (the last supported on\-disk format number is 28). To enable a feature on a pool use the \fBupgrade\fR subcommand of the \fBzpool\fR(8) command, or set the \fBfeature@\fR\fIfeature_name\fR property to \fBenabled\fR. .sp .LP The pool format does not affect file system version compatibility or the ability to send file systems between pools. .sp .LP Since most features can be enabled independently of each other the on\-disk format of the pool is specified by the set of all features marked as \fBactive\fR on the pool. If the pool was created by another software version this set may include unsupported features. .SS "Identifying features" .sp .LP Every feature has a guid of the form \fIcom.example:feature_name\fR. The reverse DNS name ensures that the feature's guid is unique across all ZFS implementations. When unsupported features are encountered on a pool they will be identified by their guids. Refer to the documentation for the ZFS implementation that created the pool for information about those features. .sp .LP Each supported feature also has a short name. By convention a feature's short name is the portion of its guid which follows the ':' (e.g. \fIcom.example:feature_name\fR would have the short name \fIfeature_name\fR), however a feature's short name may differ across ZFS implementations if following the convention would result in name conflicts. .SS "Feature states" .sp .LP Features can be in one of three states: .sp .ne 2 .na \fB\fBactive\fR\fR .ad .RS 12n This feature's on\-disk format changes are in effect on the pool. Support for this feature is required to import the pool in read\-write mode. If this feature is not read-only compatible, support is also required to import the pool in read\-only mode (see "Read\-only compatibility"). .RE .sp .ne 2 .na \fB\fBenabled\fR\fR .ad .RS 12n An administrator has marked this feature as enabled on the pool, but the feature's on\-disk format changes have not been made yet. The pool can still be imported by software that does not support this feature, but changes may be made to the on\-disk format at any time which will move the feature to the \fBactive\fR state. Some features may support returning to the \fBenabled\fR state after becoming \fBactive\fR. See feature\-specific documentation for details. .RE .sp .ne 2 .na \fBdisabled\fR .ad .RS 12n This feature's on\-disk format changes have not been made and will not be made unless an administrator moves the feature to the \fBenabled\fR state. Features cannot be disabled once they have been enabled. .RE .sp .LP The state of supported features is exposed through pool properties of the form \fIfeature@short_name\fR. .SS "Read\-only compatibility" .sp .LP Some features may make on\-disk format changes that do not interfere with other software's ability to read from the pool. These features are referred to as "read\-only compatible". If all unsupported features on a pool are read\-only compatible, the pool can be imported in read\-only mode by setting the \fBreadonly\fR property during import (see \fBzpool\fR(8) for details on importing pools). .SS "Unsupported features" .sp .LP For each unsupported feature enabled on an imported pool a pool property named \fIunsupported@feature_guid\fR will indicate why the import was allowed despite the unsupported feature. Possible values for this property are: .sp .ne 2 .na \fB\fBinactive\fR\fR .ad .RS 12n The feature is in the \fBenabled\fR state and therefore the pool's on\-disk format is still compatible with software that does not support this feature. .RE .sp .ne 2 .na \fB\fBreadonly\fR\fR .ad .RS 12n The feature is read\-only compatible and the pool has been imported in read\-only mode. .RE .SS "Feature dependencies" .sp .LP Some features depend on other features being enabled in order to function properly. Enabling a feature will automatically enable any features it depends on. .SH FEATURES .sp .LP The following features are supported on this system: .sp .ne 2 .na \fB\fBasync_destroy\fR\fR .ad .RS 4n .TS l l . GUID com.delphix:async_destroy READ\-ONLY COMPATIBLE yes DEPENDENCIES none .TE Destroying a file system requires traversing all of its data in order to return its used space to the pool. Without \fBasync_destroy\fR the file system is not fully removed until all space has been reclaimed. If the destroy operation is interrupted by a reboot or power outage the next attempt to open the pool will need to complete the destroy operation synchronously. When \fBasync_destroy\fR is enabled the file system's data will be reclaimed by a background process, allowing the destroy operation to complete without traversing the entire file system. The background process is able to resume interrupted destroys after the pool has been opened, eliminating the need to finish interrupted destroys as part of the open operation. The amount of space remaining to be reclaimed by the background process is available through the \fBfreeing\fR property. This feature is only \fBactive\fR while \fBfreeing\fR is non\-zero. .RE .sp .ne 2 .na \fB\fBempty_bpobj\fR\fR .ad .RS 4n .TS l l . GUID com.delphix:empty_bpobj READ\-ONLY COMPATIBLE yes DEPENDENCIES none .TE This feature increases the performance of creating and using a large number of snapshots of a single filesystem or volume, and also reduces the disk space required. When there are many snapshots, each snapshot uses many Block Pointer Objects (bpobj's) to track blocks associated with that snapshot. However, in common use cases, most of these bpobj's are empty. This feature allows us to create each bpobj on-demand, thus eliminating the empty bpobjs. This feature is \fBactive\fR while there are any filesystems, volumes, or snapshots which were created after enabling this feature. .RE .sp .ne 2 .na \fB\fBfilesystem_limits\fR\fR .ad .RS 4n .TS l l . GUID com.joyent:filesystem_limits READ\-ONLY COMPATIBLE yes DEPENDENCIES extensible_dataset .TE This feature enables filesystem and snapshot limits. These limits can be used to control how many filesystems and/or snapshots can be created at the point in the tree on which the limits are set. This feature is \fBactive\fR once either of the limit properties has been set on a dataset. Once activated the feature is never deactivated. .RE .sp .ne 2 .na \fB\fBlz4_compress\fR\fR .ad .RS 4n .TS l l . GUID org.illumos:lz4_compress READ\-ONLY COMPATIBLE no DEPENDENCIES none .TE \fBlz4\fR is a high-performance real-time compression algorithm that features significantly faster compression and decompression as well as a higher compression ratio than the older \fBlzjb\fR compression. Typically, \fBlz4\fR compression is approximately 50% faster on compressible data and 200% faster on incompressible data than \fBlzjb\fR. It is also approximately 80% faster on decompression, while giving approximately 10% better compression ratio. When the \fBlz4_compress\fR feature is set to \fBenabled\fR, the administrator can turn on \fBlz4\fR compression on any dataset on the pool using the \fBzfs\fR(8) command. Please note that doing so will immediately activate the \fBlz4_compress\fR feature on the underlying pool using the \fBzfs\fR(1M) command. Also, all newly written metadata will be compressed with \fBlz4\fR algorithm. Since this feature is not read-only compatible, this operation will render the pool unimportable on systems without support for the \fBlz4_compress\fR feature. Booting off of \fBlz4\fR-compressed root pools is supported. This feature becomes \fBactive\fR as soon as it is enabled and will never return to being \fBenabled\fB. .RE .sp .ne 2 .na \fB\fBspacemap_histogram\fR\fR .ad .RS 4n .TS l l . GUID com.delphix:spacemap_histogram READ\-ONLY COMPATIBLE yes DEPENDENCIES none .TE This features allows ZFS to maintain more information about how free space is organized within the pool. If this feature is \fBenabled\fR, ZFS will set this feature to \fBactive\fR when a new space map object is created or an existing space map is upgraded to the new format. Once the feature is \fBactive\fR, it will remain in that state until the pool is destroyed. .RE .sp .ne 2 .na \fB\fBmulti_vdev_crash_dump\fR\fR .ad .RS 4n .TS l l . GUID com.joyent:multi_vdev_crash_dump READ\-ONLY COMPATIBLE no DEPENDENCIES none .TE This feature allows a dump device to be configured with a pool comprised of multiple vdevs. Those vdevs may be arranged in any mirrored or raidz configuration. When the \fBmulti_vdev_crash_dump\fR feature is set to \fBenabled\fR, the administrator can use the \fBdumpadm\fR(1M) command to configure a dump device on a pool comprised of multiple vdevs. Under Linux this feature is registered for compatibility but not used. New pools created under Linux will have the feature \fBenabled\fR but will never transition to \fB\fBactive\fR. This functionality is not required in order to support crash dumps under Linux. Existing pools where this feature is \fB\fBactive\fR can be imported. .RE .sp .ne 2 .na \fB\fBextensible_dataset\fR\fR .ad .RS 4n .TS l l . GUID com.delphix:extensible_dataset READ\-ONLY COMPATIBLE no DEPENDENCIES none .TE This feature allows more flexible use of internal ZFS data structures, and exists for other features to depend on. This feature will be \fBactive\fR when the first dependent feature uses it, and will be returned to the \fBenabled\fR state when all datasets that use this feature are destroyed. .RE .sp .ne 2 .na \fB\fBbookmarks\fR\fR .ad .RS 4n .TS l l . GUID com.delphix:bookmarks READ\-ONLY COMPATIBLE yes DEPENDENCIES extensible_dataset .TE This feature enables use of the \fBzfs bookmark\fR subcommand. This feature is \fBactive\fR while any bookmarks exist in the pool. All bookmarks in the pool can be listed by running \fBzfs list -t bookmark -r \fIpoolname\fR\fR. .RE .sp .ne 2 .na \fB\fBenabled_txg\fR\fR .ad .RS 4n .TS l l . GUID com.delphix:enabled_txg READ\-ONLY COMPATIBLE yes DEPENDENCIES none .TE Once this feature is enabled ZFS records the transaction group number in which new features are enabled. This has no user-visible impact, but other features may depend on this feature. This feature becomes \fBactive\fR as soon as it is enabled and will never return to being \fBenabled\fB. .RE .sp .ne 2 .na \fB\fBhole_birth\fR\fR .ad .RS 4n .TS l l . GUID com.delphix:hole_birth READ\-ONLY COMPATIBLE no DEPENDENCIES enabled_txg .TE This feature improves performance of incremental sends ("zfs send -i") and receives for objects with many holes. The most common case of hole-filled objects is zvols. An incremental send stream from snapshot \fBA\fR to snapshot \fBB\fR contains information about every block that changed between \fBA\fR and \fBB\fR. Blocks which did not change between those snapshots can be identified and omitted from the stream using a piece of metadata called the 'block birth time', but birth times are not recorded for holes (blocks filled only with zeroes). Since holes created after \fBA\fR cannot be distinguished from holes created before \fBA\fR, information about every hole in the entire filesystem or zvol is included in the send stream. For workloads where holes are rare this is not a problem. However, when incrementally replicating filesystems or zvols with many holes (for example a zvol formatted with another filesystem) a lot of time will be spent sending and receiving unnecessary information about holes that already exist on the receiving side. Once the \fBhole_birth\fR feature has been enabled the block birth times of all new holes will be recorded. Incremental sends between snapshots created after this feature is enabled will use this new metadata to avoid sending information about holes that already exist on the receiving side. This feature becomes \fBactive\fR as soon as it is enabled and will never return to being \fBenabled\fB. .RE .sp .ne 2 .na \fB\fBembedded_data\fR\fR .ad .RS 4n .TS l l . GUID com.delphix:embedded_data READ\-ONLY COMPATIBLE no DEPENDENCIES none .TE This feature improves the performance and compression ratio of highly-compressible blocks. Blocks whose contents can compress to 112 bytes or smaller can take advantage of this feature. When this feature is enabled, the contents of highly-compressible blocks are stored in the block "pointer" itself (a misnomer in this case, as it contains the compressed data, rather than a pointer to its location on disk). Thus the space of the block (one sector, typically 512 bytes or 4KB) is saved, and no additional i/o is needed to read and write the data block. This feature becomes \fBactive\fR as soon as it is enabled and will never return to being \fBenabled\fR. .RE .sp .ne 2 .na \fB\fBlarge_blocks\fR\fR .ad .RS 4n .TS l l . GUID org.open-zfs:large_block READ\-ONLY COMPATIBLE no DEPENDENCIES extensible_dataset .TE The \fBlarge_block\fR feature allows the record size on a dataset to be set larger than 128KB. This feature becomes \fBactive\fR once a \fBrecordsize\fR property has been set larger than 128KB, and will return to being \fBenabled\fR once all filesystems that have ever had their recordsize larger than 128KB are destroyed. .RE .sp .ne 2 .na \fB\fBlarge_dnode\fR\fR .ad .RS 4n .TS l l . GUID org.zfsonlinux:large_dnode READ\-ONLY COMPATIBLE no DEPENDENCIES extensible_dataset .TE The \fBlarge_dnode\fR feature allows the size of dnodes in a dataset to be set larger than 512B. This feature becomes \fBactive\fR once a dataset contains an object with a dnode larger than 512B, which occurs as a result of setting the \fBdnodesize\fR dataset property to a value other than \fBlegacy\fR. The feature will return to being \fBenabled\fR once all filesystems that have ever contained a dnode larger than 512B are destroyed. Large dnodes allow more data to be stored in the bonus buffer, thus potentially improving performance by avoiding the use of spill blocks. .RE \fB\fBsha512\fR\fR .ad .RS 4n .TS l l . GUID org.illumos:sha512 READ\-ONLY COMPATIBLE no DEPENDENCIES extensible_dataset .TE This feature enables the use of the SHA-512/256 truncated hash algorithm (FIPS 180-4) for checksum and dedup. The native 64-bit arithmetic of SHA-512 provides an approximate 50% performance boost over SHA-256 on 64-bit hardware and is thus a good minimum-change replacement candidate for systems where hash performance is important, but these systems cannot for whatever reason utilize the faster \fBskein\fR and \fBedonr\fR algorithms. When the \fBsha512\fR feature is set to \fBenabled\fR, the administrator can turn on the \fBsha512\fR checksum on any dataset using the \fBzfs set checksum=sha512\fR(1M) command. This feature becomes \fBactive\fR once a \fBchecksum\fR property has been set to \fBsha512\fR, and will return to being \fBenabled\fR once all filesystems that have ever had their checksum set to \fBsha512\fR are destroyed. Booting off of pools utilizing SHA-512/256 is supported (provided that the updated GRUB stage2 module is installed). .RE .sp .ne 2 .na \fB\fBskein\fR\fR .ad .RS 4n .TS l l . GUID org.illumos:skein READ\-ONLY COMPATIBLE no DEPENDENCIES extensible_dataset .TE This feature enables the use of the Skein hash algorithm for checksum and dedup. Skein is a high-performance secure hash algorithm that was a finalist in the NIST SHA-3 competition. It provides a very high security margin and high performance on 64-bit hardware (80% faster than SHA-256). This implementation also utilizes the new salted checksumming functionality in ZFS, which means that the checksum is pre-seeded with a secret 256-bit random key (stored on the pool) before being fed the data block to be checksummed. Thus the produced checksums are unique to a given pool, preventing hash collision attacks on systems with dedup. When the \fBskein\fR feature is set to \fBenabled\fR, the administrator can turn on the \fBskein\fR checksum on any dataset using the \fBzfs set checksum=skein\fR(1M) command. This feature becomes \fBactive\fR once a \fBchecksum\fR property has been set to \fBskein\fR, and will return to being \fBenabled\fR once all filesystems that have ever had their checksum set to \fBskein\fR are destroyed. Booting off of pools using \fBskein\fR is \fBNOT\fR supported -- any attempt to enable \fBskein\fR on a root pool will fail with an error. .RE .sp .ne 2 .na \fB\fBedonr\fR\fR .ad .RS 4n .TS l l . GUID org.illumos:edonr READ\-ONLY COMPATIBLE no DEPENDENCIES extensible_dataset .TE This feature enables the use of the Edon-R hash algorithm for checksum, including for nopwrite (if compression is also enabled, an overwrite of a block whose checksum matches the data being written will be ignored). In an abundance of caution, Edon-R can not be used with dedup (without verification). Edon-R is a very high-performance hash algorithm that was part of the NIST SHA-3 competition. It provides extremely high hash performance (over 350% faster than SHA-256), but was not selected because of its unsuitability as a general purpose secure hash algorithm. This implementation utilizes the new salted checksumming functionality in ZFS, which means that the checksum is pre-seeded with a secret 256-bit random key (stored on the pool) before being fed the data block to be checksummed. Thus the produced checksums are unique to a given pool. When the \fBedonr\fR feature is set to \fBenabled\fR, the administrator can turn on the \fBedonr\fR checksum on any dataset using the \fBzfs set checksum=edonr\fR(1M) command. This feature becomes \fBactive\fR once a \fBchecksum\fR property has been set to \fBedonr\fR, and will return to being \fBenabled\fR once all filesystems that have ever had their checksum set to \fBedonr\fR are destroyed. Booting off of pools using \fBedonr\fR is \fBNOT\fR supported -- any attempt to enable \fBedonr\fR on a root pool will fail with an error. .RE .sp .ne 2 .na \fB\fBuserobj_accounting\fR\fR .ad .RS 4n .TS l l . GUID org.zfsonlinux:userobj_accounting READ\-ONLY COMPATIBLE yes DEPENDENCIES extensible_dataset .TE This feature allows administrators to account the object usage information by user and group. This feature becomes \fBactive\fR as soon as it is enabled and will never return to being \fBenabled\fR. Each filesystem will be upgraded automatically when remounted, or when new files are created under that filesystem. The upgrade can also be started manually on filesystems by running `zfs set version=current `. The upgrade process runs in the background and may take a while to complete for filesystems containing a large number of files. .RE .SH "SEE ALSO" \fBzpool\fR(8)