zfs discuss - Aug 2008 - Can ZFS delete snapshots automatically?

Hi all,
Since it is said that ZFS can offer unlimited snapshots, I am just wondering
that if there are too many snapshots which consumes too much space, how can ZFS
deal with this?
 
 
This message posted from opensolaris.org

On Aug 24, 2008, at 12:16, Robert wrote:
> Since it is said that ZFS can offer unlimited snapshots, I am just  
> wondering that if there are too many snapshots which consumes too  
> much space, how can ZFS deal with this?
You tell ZFS to delete the unneeded ones, or you hit 100% disk usage  
and it returns an error when you do a write(2) call.

Automatically doing things behind the user''s / sys admin''s
back is
generally not considered proper procedure.

If the user wants something done they can write a script, or one be  
written for them in more "consumer friendly" systems, e.g. many Linux
distributions, but since you can''t predict where, when, or how  
functionality will be used, automatic mechanisms are generally avoided  
in Unix.

zfs itself can''t, but Tim Foster has written a nice script, integrated
into SMF, which can be used to automatically create and delete snapshots at
various intervals.

see http://blogs.sun.com/timf/entry/zfs_automatic_snapshots_0_10 for the latest
release and http://opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?messageID=267703 for a
discussion about possible improvements, if you are interested.
 
 
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Thanks for you two''s nice answers!
 
 
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there http://pastebin.ca/1069352 is one homebrew script.
It purge snapshots by age and name mask.
 
 
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