I’m trying to setup a new host in my homelab, and I’d like to have the zfs snapshot functionality available. However, I can’t seem to find anything on setting up a server distro with zfs. Which makes me wonder if there’s a reason I can’t find anything.
Is it worthwhile, or am I wasting my time?
Are you referring to installing a Ubuntu Server root on ZFS, or are you looking to use ZFS only for data pools or virtual machines?
If root on ZFS, have you studied up on ZFS Boot Menu? Ubuntu (UEFI) — ZFSBootMenu 3.1.0 documentation
Well I’m not using VMs, so it must be one lf the other, lol! But I’m unfamiliar with data pools (or zfs for that matter). I guess server on root. I want to be able to take and restore snapshots that are fast fast fast so I can mess up an OS install a d quickly recover.
Linux OSs do not natively include ZFS in installers for root on ZFS. There are manual methods to installing root on ZFS on bare metal machines. I used to do this but have recently put my root install on a standard linux filesystem, EXT4 + LVM, and instead use the power of ZFS to manage data storage, snapshots & replications.
Here is more info on root on ZFS:
This is great reading to learn all about ZFS, the first article I ever read on it, still a great read to learn.