I run zfs as the storage pool for my incus (next lxd) services. It is the ideal fit. Here is a list:
- Instant, zero-copy container cloning from images via Copy-on-Write. If you boot a new image like the existing ones it's seconds.
- Atomic, millisecond-level instance snapshots regardless of storage size
- Block-level container migration using native 'zfs send' and 'zfs receive', very short command lines and seems to work perfectly.
- Granular dataset nesting (every instance, image, and custom volume gets its own ZFS dataset). You can see every filesystem even on the host.
- Transparent, inline data compression (LZ4/ZSTD) enabled automatically per dataset. For services that don't change much, you might as well use a compressed image to make them even smaller.
- Mirroring / Raid
- Sub-volume sharing and direct management via native ZFS administration tools. If my home directory has a build area and a million files, I can just save time and put my home, pre cooked into a new machine and not copy or even rebuild on my new machine.
- Dedup keeps blocks with the same data as a reference. This costs a lot of memory and has not saved much for me as a lot of my images are similar and already shared I think, but it's cool.
- Instant, zero-copy container cloning from images via Copy-on-Write. If you boot a new image like the existing ones it's seconds.
- Atomic, millisecond-level instance snapshots regardless of storage size
- Block-level container migration using native 'zfs send' and 'zfs receive', very short command lines and seems to work perfectly.
- Granular dataset nesting (every instance, image, and custom volume gets its own ZFS dataset). You can see every filesystem even on the host.
- Transparent, inline data compression (LZ4/ZSTD) enabled automatically per dataset. For services that don't change much, you might as well use a compressed image to make them even smaller.
- Mirroring / Raid
- Sub-volume sharing and direct management via native ZFS administration tools. If my home directory has a build area and a million files, I can just save time and put my home, pre cooked into a new machine and not copy or even rebuild on my new machine.
- Dedup keeps blocks with the same data as a reference. This costs a lot of memory and has not saved much for me as a lot of my images are similar and already shared I think, but it's cool.