Integrated sharesmb vs native samba share

OpenZFS
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While reading up a bit about the integrated sharesmb feature, one point stood out to me: the Debian wiki states “ZFS has integration with operating system’s NFS, CIFS and iSCSI servers, it does not implement its own server but reuse existing software”.

I can see how this is useful for NFS where the number of configuration parameters is typically very managable, but what benefits have samba shares to be integrated into a zfs dataset? Isn’t the configuration there typically cunbersome at best? Why not simply use a native samba server to export your zfs shares, what benefits do you have in using zfs set sharesmb=on tank/data/mydogspicturearchive ?

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First off, I agree completely–I really don’t recommend using the ZFS primitives to manage Samba.

Second, I can tell you a potential benefit: if the management is implemented within ZFS, ZFS can store configuration information about your shares in custom properties embedded directly in the datasets being shared, potentially enabling you to have them automatically shared again on other systems you replicate to / restoring their sharing on those systems using the embedded properties / etc.

Third, sorry, I can’t believe I didn’t see this topic from so long ago! <3

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