I think it's a valid criticism. As interesting as the video and the history are, I don't think they're going to be especially helpful for a n00b who's trying to set up a sensible ZFS pool....And I think (based both on the text Bikerchris wrote, and the place he posted it) that's how he intended it to be used (regardless of what Wendell may have intended). For that purpose, I think there are other resources that would be more helpful (many of which are already posted here). If you want an overview of the history of ZFS and what it's designed to accomplish, great. If you want to understand how to make it work for you, there are probably better resources.
I do agree with you, the video doesn't give the viewer much in the way of helpful information on how to
use ZFS. However, I think it was rather obvious that that wasn't the goal of the video at all. He starts the video by stating that it's intended purpose is to teach people
what ZFS is. There is a subtle distinction there, but they are indeed two different topics. Just because his actual goal was different than your expectation, doesn't mean its not worth utilizing as a resource when learning what ZFS is...
However, Wendell's marketing here might be a little off. He posted this on Level1 Linux, not Level1 Enterprise where it should have been. If you listened to the whole video, you will notice he uses multiple comparisons to NetAPP and hardware raid, as well as draws the warm and fuzzies from people familiar with the Sun of old. Really, he is speaking directly to those SysAdmins out there who have no idea what ZFS is and is telling them why the really should be using it.
I also think it's a valid criticism to note that the comparison to btrfs promised in the video's introduction was pretty much nonexistent.
To go along with my above statement, let's think about the
enterprise. Rightfully or not, btrfs has a bad reputation with folks who's job it is to maintain systems in the enterprise. Whether at this point btrfs is ready for that model or not, when it was supposedly "stable" and RAID5 didn't work...People looked away and haven't come back. Wendell sums up that sentimate and seems to largely agree with alot of those who hold that opinion. He mentions btrfs as something which is a possible alternative, and states why he feels ZFS is a better choice, just like he does with NetApp and hardware RAID. I think that is good enough for the
goal of his video.
He actually uses a number of graphics (all from different sources AFAIK; they aren't original to him) that say the same thing. He himself is speaking very generally and doesn't get to that level of detail in any way. But it seems I've run across a number of people here in the not-too-distant past who believe that RAIDZ1 has one dedicated parity disk, RAIDZ2 has two, etc. I was a little puzzled about why they would think that, but when I see the graphics Wendell is using, I think the question is answered.
But again, think about it from the lens of someone who knows nothing about how ZFS, but is a sys admin in charge of a large organization. When you are managing dozens or hundreds of sites and you want to know what your options are for storage, while juggling all of your other 10,000 responsibilities, how deep down the rabbit hole are you going to go? I don't really think the distinction between having 2 dedicated parity drives or having 2 drives worth of parity being stored over all of the disks in the vdev really matters to them.
I just think you are being critical for the sake of zealotry. This was a great piece of information worth sharing. He just marketed it wrong--and that is forgivable. He's a systems engineer not a marketing specialist.