OpenZFS 2.2 support for reflinks now available

[Andreas Neufert]

For ZFS behind an SMB filer. If the vendor support FSCTL_DUPLICATE_EXTENTS_TO_FILE and FSCTL_SET_INTEGRITY_INFORMATION on the SMB side backed by the ZFS filesystem fast cloning in the backend, then it would work out of the box with Veeam as well. I am not aware of any of the storage vendors that have implemented this combination, but if a vendor wants to implement it that way, they can reach to me and my team.

[HannesK]

But no generic enablement without filesystem filter (btrfs, non-ReFS SMB)?

it's generic enablement for block storage. BTRFS reflink works, but was never tested by QA. I also expect bcachefs to work, but I did not test that.

NFS reflink needs changes in the gateway server role (different component).

[zbe]

Hi,

I have a stupid question perhaps. How/where can this be enabled and tested exactly? At the moment I have a SMB repository on a Proxmox VM (linux), but this won't work apparently? So if anyone is so kind to tell me basic steps to make this work from Veeam B&R on a Windows server VM (hyper-v), I'd be grateful.

Cheers.

[HannesK]

Hello,
for SMB on top of ZFS, please see Andreas answer above. That's very likely to fail.

1. Linux machine is required (you have that as far as I see). We did not test / check ZFS on Windows (but I think that's not your question)
2. Create the file /etc/veeam/EnableZFSBlockCloning file on the Linux machine
3. Add the Linux machine as Linux repository and keep the XFS checkbox checked

Best regards,
Hannes

[ashleyw]

Hi, Just for the benefit of anyone looking at this without the background, I'm assuming the OpenZFS support is dependent on upgrading to Veeam 12.1.2? (Which was released a couple of days ago)? Nice work to the Veeam team - Will be upgrading our deployment later this morning!

[HannesK]

Official OpenZFS support depends on how stable reflink is. The first step is, that OpenZFS project decides to make it enabled per default. Once we see it's stable, we would change to "experimental support" (explained earlier by Gostev). 12.1.2 is the minimum version from Veeam side, but that could change in future.