Provided by: zfsutils-linux_0.8.3-1ubuntu12.17_amd64 
NAME
zpool-features - ZFS pool feature descriptions
DESCRIPTION
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 upgrade subcommand of the zpool(8) command, or set the
feature@feature_name property to enabled.
The pool format does not affect file system version compatibility or the ability to send
file systems between pools.
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 active on the pool. If the pool was
created by another software version this set may include unsupported features.
Identifying features
Every feature has a GUID of the form com.example:feature_name. 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.
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. com.example:feature_name would have the
short name feature_name), however a feature's short name may differ across ZFS
implementations if following the convention would result in name conflicts.
Feature states
Features can be in one of three states:
active
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").
enabled
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
active state. Some features may support returning to the enabled state after
becoming active. See feature-specific documentation for details.
disabled
This feature's on-disk format changes have not been made and will not be made
unless an administrator moves the feature to the enabled state. Features
cannot be disabled once they have been enabled.
The state of supported features is exposed through pool properties of the form
feature@short_name.
Read-only compatibility
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 readonly property during import (see zpool(8) for details
on importing pools).
Unsupported features
For each unsupported feature enabled on an imported pool a pool property named
unsupported@feature_name will indicate why the import was allowed despite the unsupported
feature. Possible values for this property are:
inactive
The feature is in the enabled state and therefore the pool's on-disk format is
still compatible with software that does not support this feature.
readonly
The feature is read-only compatible and the pool has been imported in
read-only mode.
Feature dependencies
Some features depend on other features being enabled in order to function properly.
Enabling a feature will automatically enable any features it depends on.
FEATURES
The following features are supported on this system:
allocation_classes
GUID org.zfsonlinux:allocation_classes
READ-ONLY COMPATIBLE yes
DEPENDENCIES none
This feature enables support for separate allocation classes.
This feature becomes active when a dedicated allocation class vdev (dedup or special)
is created with the zpool create or zpool add subcommands. With device removal, it can
be returned to the enabled state if all the dedicated allocation class vdevs are
removed.
async_destroy
GUID com.delphix:async_destroy
READ-ONLY COMPATIBLE yes
DEPENDENCIES none
Destroying a file system requires traversing all of its data in order to return its
used space to the pool. Without async_destroy 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 async_destroy 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 freeing property.
This feature is only active while freeing is non-zero.
bookmarks
GUID com.delphix:bookmarks
READ-ONLY COMPATIBLE yes
DEPENDENCIES extensible_dataset
This feature enables use of the zfs bookmark subcommand.
This feature is active while any bookmarks exist in the pool. All bookmarks in the
pool can be listed by running zfs list -t bookmark -r poolname.
bookmark_v2
GUID com.datto:bookmark_v2
READ-ONLY COMPATIBLE no
DEPENDENCIES bookmark, extensible_dataset
This feature enables the creation and management of larger bookmarks which are needed
for other features in ZFS.
This feature becomes active when a v2 bookmark is created and will be returned to the
enabled state when all v2 bookmarks are destroyed.
device_removal
GUID com.delphix:device_removal
READ-ONLY COMPATIBLE no
DEPENDENCIES none
This feature enables the zpool remove subcommand to remove top-level vdevs, evacuating
them to reduce the total size of the pool.
This feature becomes active when the zpool remove subcommand is used on a top-level
vdev, and will never return to being enabled.
edonr
GUID org.illumos:edonr
READ-ONLY COMPATIBLE no
DEPENDENCIES extensible_dataset
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
requires verification when used with dedup: zfs set dedup=edonr,verify. See zfs(8).
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 edonr feature is set to enabled, the administrator can turn on the edonr
checksum on any dataset using the zfs set checksum=edonr. See zfs(8). This feature
becomes active once a checksum property has been set to edonr, and will return to
being enabled once all filesystems that have ever had their checksum set to edonr are
destroyed.
The edonr feature is not supported by GRUB and must not be used on the pool if GRUB
needs to access the pool (e.g. for /boot).
embedded_data
GUID com.delphix:embedded_data
READ-ONLY COMPATIBLE no
DEPENDENCIES none
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 active as soon as it is enabled and will never return to being
enabled.
empty_bpobj
GUID com.delphix:empty_bpobj
READ-ONLY COMPATIBLE yes
DEPENDENCIES none
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 active while there are any filesystems, volumes, or snapshots which
were created after enabling this feature.
enabled_txg
GUID com.delphix:enabled_txg
READ-ONLY COMPATIBLE yes
DEPENDENCIES none
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 active as soon as it is enabled and will never return to being
enabled.
encryption
GUID com.datto:encryption
READ-ONLY COMPATIBLE no
DEPENDENCIES bookmark_v2, extensible_dataset
This feature enables the creation and management of natively encrypted datasets.
This feature becomes active when an encrypted dataset is created and will be returned
to the enabled state when all datasets that use this feature are destroyed.
extensible_dataset
GUID com.delphix:extensible_dataset
READ-ONLY COMPATIBLE no
DEPENDENCIES none
This feature allows more flexible use of internal ZFS data structures, and exists for
other features to depend on.
This feature will be active when the first dependent feature uses it, and will be
returned to the enabled state when all datasets that use this feature are destroyed.
filesystem_limits
GUID com.joyent:filesystem_limits
READ-ONLY COMPATIBLE yes
DEPENDENCIES extensible_dataset
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 active once either of the limit properties has been set on a dataset.
Once activated the feature is never deactivated.
hole_birth
GUID com.delphix:hole_birth
READ-ONLY COMPATIBLE no
DEPENDENCIES enabled_txg
This feature has/had bugs, the result of which is that, if you do a zfs send -i (or
-R, since it uses -i) from an affected dataset, the receiver will not see any checksum
or other errors, but the resulting destination snapshot will not match the source.
Its use by zfs send -i has been disabled by default. See the
send_holes_without_birth_time module parameter in zfs-module-parameters(5).
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 A to snapshot B contains information about
every block that changed between A and B. 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 A cannot be distinguished from
holes created before A, 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 hole_birth 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 active as soon as it is enabled and will never return to being
enabled.
large_blocks
GUID org.open-zfs:large_blocks
READ-ONLY COMPATIBLE no
DEPENDENCIES extensible_dataset
The large_block feature allows the record size on a dataset to be set larger than
128KB.
This feature becomes active once a dataset contains a file with a block size larger
than 128KB, and will return to being enabled once all filesystems that have ever had
their recordsize larger than 128KB are destroyed.
large_dnode
GUID org.zfsonlinux:large_dnode
READ-ONLY COMPATIBLE no
DEPENDENCIES extensible_dataset
The large_dnode feature allows the size of dnodes in a dataset to be set larger than
512B.
This feature becomes active once a dataset contains an object with a dnode larger than
512B, which occurs as a result of setting the dnodesize dataset property to a value
other than legacy. The feature will return to being enabled 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.
lz4_compress
GUID org.illumos:lz4_compress
READ-ONLY COMPATIBLE no
DEPENDENCIES none
lz4 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 lzjb compression. Typically, lz4 compression is approximately 50% faster on
compressible data and 200% faster on incompressible data than lzjb. It is also
approximately 80% faster on decompression, while giving approximately 10% better
compression ratio.
When the lz4_compress feature is set to enabled, the administrator can turn on lz4
compression on any dataset on the pool using the zfs(8) command. Please note that
doing so will immediately activate the lz4_compress feature on the underlying pool
using the zfs(8) command. Also, all newly written metadata will be compressed with lz4
algorithm. Since this feature is not read-only compatible, this operation will render
the pool unimportable on systems without support for the lz4_compress feature.
Booting off of lz4-compressed root pools is supported.
This feature becomes active as soon as it is enabled and will never return to being
enabled.
multi_vdev_crash_dump
GUID com.joyent:multi_vdev_crash_dump
READ-ONLY COMPATIBLE no
DEPENDENCIES none
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 multi_vdev_crash_dump feature is set to enabled, the administrator can use
the dumpadm(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 enabled but will never transition to active.
This functionality is not required in order to support crash dumps under Linux.
Existing pools where this feature is active can be imported.
obsolete_counts
GUID com.delphix:obsolete_counts
READ-ONLY COMPATIBLE yes
DEPENDENCIES device_removal
This feature is an enhancement of device_removal, which will over time reduce the
memory used to track removed devices. When indirect blocks are freed or remapped, we
note that their part of the indirect mapping is "obsolete", i.e. no longer needed.
This feature becomes active when the zpool remove subcommand is used on a top-level
vdev, and will never return to being enabled.
project_quota
GUID org.zfsonlinux:project_quota
READ-ONLY COMPATIBLE yes
DEPENDENCIES extensible_dataset
This feature allows administrators to account the spaces and objects usage information
against the project identifier (ID).
The project ID is new object-based attribute. When upgrading an existing filesystem,
object without project ID attribute will be assigned a zero project ID. After this
feature is enabled, newly created object will inherit its parent directory's project
ID if the parent inherit flag is set (via chattr +/-P or zfs project [-s|-C]).
Otherwise, the new object's project ID will be set as zero. An object's project ID can
be changed at anytime by the owner (or privileged user) via chattr -p $prjid or zfs
project -p $prjid.
This feature will become active as soon as it is enabled and will never return to
being disabled. Each filesystem will be upgraded automatically when remounted or when
new file is created under that filesystem. The upgrade can also be triggered on
filesystems via `zfs set version=current <pool/fs>`. The upgrade process runs in the
background and may take a while to complete for the filesystems containing a large
number of files.
resilver_defer
GUID com.datto:resilver_defer
READ-ONLY COMPATIBLE yes
DEPENDENCIES none
This feature allows zfs to postpone new resilvers if an existing one is already in
progress. Without this feature, any new resilvers will cause the currently running one
to be immediately restarted from the beginning.
This feature becomes active once a resilver has been deferred, and returns to being
enabled when the deferred resilver begins.
sha512
GUID org.illumos:sha512
READ-ONLY COMPATIBLE no
DEPENDENCIES extensible_dataset
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 skein and edonr
algorithms.
When the sha512 feature is set to enabled, the administrator can turn on the sha512
checksum on any dataset using zfs set checksum=sha512. See zfs(8). This feature
becomes active once a checksum property has been set to sha512, and will return to
being enabled once all filesystems that have ever had their checksum set to sha512 are
destroyed.
The sha512 feature is not supported by GRUB and must not be used on the pool if GRUB
needs to access the pool (e.g. for /boot).
skein
GUID org.illumos:skein
READ-ONLY COMPATIBLE no
DEPENDENCIES extensible_dataset
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 skein feature is set to enabled, the administrator can turn on the skein
checksum on any dataset using zfs set checksum=skein. See zfs(8). This feature becomes
active once a checksum property has been set to skein, and will return to being
enabled once all filesystems that have ever had their checksum set to skein are
destroyed.
The skein feature is not supported by GRUB and must not be used on the pool if GRUB
needs to access the pool (e.g. for /boot).
spacemap_histogram
GUID com.delphix:spacemap_histogram
READ-ONLY COMPATIBLE yes
DEPENDENCIES none
This features allows ZFS to maintain more information about how free space is
organized within the pool. If this feature is enabled, ZFS will set this feature to
active when a new space map object is created or an existing space map is upgraded to
the new format. Once the feature is active, it will remain in that state until the
pool is destroyed.
spacemap_v2
GUID com.delphix:spacemap_v2
READ-ONLY COMPATIBLE yes
DEPENDENCIES none
This feature enables the use of the new space map encoding which consists of two words
(instead of one) whenever it is advantageous. The new encoding allows space maps to
represent large regions of space more efficiently on-disk while also increasing their
maximum addressable offset.
This feature becomes active once it is enabled, and never returns back to being
enabled.
userobj_accounting
GUID org.zfsonlinux:userobj_accounting
READ-ONLY COMPATIBLE yes
DEPENDENCIES extensible_dataset
This feature allows administrators to account the object usage information by user and
group.
This feature becomes active as soon as it is enabled and will never return to being
enabled. 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 <pool/fs>`. The upgrade process runs
in the background and may take a while to complete for filesystems containing a large
number of files.
zpool_checkpoint
GUID com.delphix:zpool_checkpoint
READ-ONLY COMPATIBLE yes
DEPENDENCIES none
This feature enables the zpool checkpoint subcommand that can checkpoint the state of
the pool at the time it was issued and later rewind back to it or discard it.
This feature becomes active when the zpool checkpoint subcommand is used to checkpoint
the pool. The feature will only return back to being enabled when the pool is rewound
or the checkpoint has been discarded.
SEE ALSO
zpool(8)
Jun 8, 2018 ZPOOL-FEATURES(5)