Advanced Use Cases

ZeroFS enables powerful architectures that were previously complex or expensive to implement. From geo-distributed ZFS pools to tiered storage systems, this guide explores advanced use cases that showcase ZeroFS's full potential for enterprise and innovative deployments.

Geo-Distributed Storage

Create globally distributed storage systems using ZeroFS instances across multiple regions:

# zerofs-us-east.toml
[cache]
dir = "/var/cache/zerofs"
disk_size_gb = 50.0

[storage]
url = "s3://my-bucket/us-east-db"
encryption_password = "shared-key"

[aws]
region = "us-east-1"

[servers.nbd]
addresses = ["127.0.0.1:10809"]

# Start: zerofs run -c zerofs-us-east.toml

Benefits of Geo-Distribution

  • Disaster Recovery: Data survives regional outages
  • Geographic Redundancy: Automatic replication across continents
  • Read Performance: Local reads from nearby regions
  • Compliance: Data residency requirements met

Tiered Storage Architecture

Combine ZeroFS with ZFS L2ARC for automatic storage tiering:

# Create S3-backed main pool
zpool create datapool /dev/nbd0 /dev/nbd1 /dev/nbd2

# Add local NVMe as L2ARC cache
zpool add datapool cache /dev/nvme0n1

# Add local SSD as SLOG for write performance
zpool add datapool log /dev/ssd0

# Monitor cache effectiveness
zpool iostat -v datapool 5

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