to Z(vol) or not to Z(vol) - that is my question

[master-richie]

n00b to FreeNAS and ZFS. setup 2 new 3tb drives in a mirror on a HP N40L with 16gb ecc ram. my intention is a multi-use storage server that can handle my biz and home needs.

I want to create a split scenario where users and certain subnets cannot see shares not permitted to them. I'll also be running Owncloud and other native FreeNAS services in jails. I've setup a zpool which is the mirror of both 3tb drives and now am wondering what to do next...

Should I only create datasets in the zpool and share them or should I create zvols and then datasets within them? For some reason, I just find any deep information on zvols or any examples of what they are used for and I would hate to spend all my time creating shares and copying data only to find out my structure is wrong thus requiring me to start over.

Any help is appreciated, thanks!

 

[dlavigne]

For an overview of zvols, refer to http://doc.freenas.org/9.3/freenas_storage.html#create-zvol. Unless you are using iSCSI, this is not what you want.

 

[master-richie]

For an overview of zvols, refer to http://doc.freenas.org/9.3/freenas_storage.html#create-zvol. Unless you are using iSCSI, this is not what you want.

yeah, read that before I posted my question which is more of an answer to "how" than it is to "why". I eventually got my answer by spending 4+ hours watching youtube videos and scouring google.

zvol's are much more powerful and useful than strictly iSCSI scenarios but in my situation, I don't need them. They mainly are an enterprise level feature my home NAS box doesn't need.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-KesLwobps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oJ0vlzeJio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZlGePzotLk

http://www.funtoo.org/ZFS_Fun