when to create ZFS Datasets

[rickwhois]

Quick version: Is it necessary to create ZFS datasets or should i just make (browse to) directory paths to share to afp and smb...?

I've been using Fn8 since early beta. Initially, I wasn't able to locate how to create read/write mount points in any network file protocol. However, I was able to do so by creating a ZFS dataset. At this point I was able to go to create an AFP share and set the path to the dataset I just created.

Example: my 3 hard drive zfs raidz called "data" has a mount point of /mnt/data. My AFP share called "media" is set to /mnt/data/media.

Is this over kill? Or am I doing this incorrectly? This video was released yesterday on how to setup a zfs and share network filing protocols like smb, afp etc....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7iqHnKd690 It is more like Freenas 7. Can someone elaborate on ZFS datasets and the need for them over set paths directories? Or can you point me to a more in depth understanding of them?

 

[rickwhois]

or how about... who here uses datasets?

 

[matthewowen01]

In the initial release you could only share datasets. That has been changed. Data sets can be nice for segmenting data if you you use snapshots, i use them for that.

 

[ProtoSD]

@matt, that's nice to know, thanks for pointing that out. I hadn't thought about the snapshot angle.

 

[jenksdrummer]

Since 8.0-RELEASE, I've created a dataset for each share. I too hadn't thought from the snapshot angle, but, seems that wasn't a bad idea to continue doing.