james hughes wrote: > Does ZFS have a feature that allows diffs to be placed another space? > This would be valuable to Xen clients where all the clients are > booted off the same golden master. >
While we need to have much more conversation with the Xen project about the topic, I think we'd agree that their current usage model for that scenario based on the diskless client setup would be vastly improved by using ZFS clones, which do a form of "another space". I suspect you're suggesting a much more flexible redirection than ZFS clones allow, in which case UnionFS or its ilk might be helpful. But I still wonder at that point if the complications (and resulting costs) there are worse long-term than spending some time re-thinking how the system is put together to make such overlay machinery unnecessary to get "another space" for the pieces which truly need it. Would probably be interesting for someone to start playing with the FunionFS stuff from FUSE (assuming we have that working) just to understand how it might fit. Dave
