ZFS will give you advantages beyond software RAID. The command structure is very thoughtfully laid out, and intuitive. It's also got compression, snapshots, cloning, filesystem send/receive, and cache devices (those fancy new SSD drives) to speed up indexing meta-data.

Compression:

#zfs set compression=on filesystem/home 

It supports simple to create copy-on-write snapshots that can be live-mounted:

# zfs snapshot filesystem/home/user@tuesday # cd filesystem/home/user/.zfs/snapshot/tuesday 

Filesystem cloning:

# zfs clone filesystem/home/user@tuesday filesystem/home/user2 

Filesystem send/receive:

# zfs send filesystem/home/user@tuesday | ssh otherserver "zfs receive -v filesystem/home/user" 

Incremental send/receive:

# zfs send -i filesystem/home/user@tuesday | ssh otherserver "zfs receive -v filesystem/home/user" 

Caching devices:

# zpool add filesystem cache ssddev 

This is all just the tip of the iceberg, I would highly recommend getting your hands on an install of Open Solaris and trying this out.

http://www.opensolaris.org/os/TryOpenSolaris/

Edit: This is very old, Open Solaris has been discontinued, the best way to use ZFS is probably on Linux, all that information can be found here.

---------- Full disclosure: I used to be a Sun storage architect, but I haven't worked for them in over a year, I'm just excited about this product.

ZFS will give you advantages beyond software RAID. The command structure is very thoughtfully laid out, and intuitive. It's also got compression, snapshots, cloning, filesystem send/receive, and cache devices (those fancy new SSD drives) to speed up indexing meta-data.

Compression:

#zfs set compression=on filesystem/home 

It supports simple to create copy-on-write snapshots that can be live-mounted:

# zfs snapshot filesystem/home/user@tuesday # cd filesystem/home/user/.zfs/snapshot/tuesday 

Filesystem cloning:

# zfs clone filesystem/home/user@tuesday filesystem/home/user2 

Filesystem send/receive:

# zfs send filesystem/home/user@tuesday | ssh otherserver "zfs receive -v filesystem/home/user" 

Incremental send/receive:

# zfs send -i filesystem/home/user@tuesday | ssh otherserver "zfs receive -v filesystem/home/user" 

Caching devices:

# zpool add filesystem cache ssddev 

This is all just the tip of the iceberg, I would highly recommend getting your hands on an install of Open Solaris and trying this out.

http://www.opensolaris.org/os/TryOpenSolaris/

Edit: This is very old, Open Solaris has been discontinued, the best way to use ZFS is probably on Linux, or FreeBSD.

---------- Full disclosure: I used to be a Sun storage architect, but I haven't worked for them in over a year, I'm just excited about this product.

ZFS will give you advantages beyond software RAID. The command structure is very thoughtfully laid out, and intuitive. It's also got compression, snapshots, cloning, filesystem send/receive, and cache devices (those fancy new SSD drives) to speed up indexing meta-data.

Compression:

#zfs set compression=on filesystem/home 

It supports simple to create copy-on-write snapshots that can be live-mounted:

# zfs snapshot filesystem/home/user@tuesday # cd filesystem/home/user/.zfs/snapshot/tuesday 

Filesystem cloning:

# zfs clone filesystem/home/user@tuesday filesystem/home/user2 

Filesystem send/receive:

# zfs send filesystem/home/user@tuesday | ssh otherserver "zfs receive -v filesystem/home/user" 

Incremental send/receive:

# zfs send -i filesystem/home/user@tuesday | ssh otherserver "zfs receive -v filesystem/home/user" 

Caching devices:

# zpool add filesystem cache ssddev 

This is all just the tip of the iceberg, I would highly recommend getting your hands on an install of Open Solaris and trying this out.

http://www.opensolaris.org/os/TryOpenSolaris/

Full disclosure: I used to be a Sun storage architect, but I haven't worked for them in over a year, I'm just excited about this product.

ZFS will give you advantages beyond software RAID. The command structure is very thoughtfully laid out, and intuitive. It's also got compression, snapshots, cloning, filesystem send/receive, and cache devices (those fancy new SSD drives) to speed up indexing meta-data.

Compression:

#zfs set compression=on filesystem/home 

It supports simple to create copy-on-write snapshots that can be live-mounted:

# zfs snapshot filesystem/home/user@tuesday # cd filesystem/home/user/.zfs/snapshot/tuesday 

Filesystem cloning:

# zfs clone filesystem/home/user@tuesday filesystem/home/user2 

Filesystem send/receive:

# zfs send filesystem/home/user@tuesday | ssh otherserver "zfs receive -v filesystem/home/user" 

Incremental send/receive:

# zfs send -i filesystem/home/user@tuesday | ssh otherserver "zfs receive -v filesystem/home/user" 

Caching devices:

# zpool add filesystem cache ssddev 

This is all just the tip of the iceberg, I would highly recommend getting your hands on an install of Open Solaris and trying this out.

http://www.opensolaris.org/os/TryOpenSolaris/

Edit: This is very old, Open Solaris has been discontinued, the best way to use ZFS is probably on Linux, all that information can be found here.

---------- Full disclosure: I used to be a Sun storage architect, but I haven't worked for them in over a year, I'm just excited about this product.