Managing System Images with ZFS

Allan Jude <allan@klarasystems.com>

The author describes existing procedures, tools, and ongoing development to improve the process of updating appliances, remote systems, and individual computers using ZFS. This paper describes a mechanism for replacing the operating system image with a newer image in a safe and atomic fashion. This system allows for fail-safe unattended upgrades of remote appliances and machines with a built in automatic recovery mechanism in the event of failure. Current and planned enhancements to ‘poudriere image’ are described as well as improvements to support tools including bectl and zfsbootcfg.