Vagrant ZFS

This repository contains Vagrant configuration using the libvirt provider to create a virtual ZFS environment for testing purposes.

The setup leverages sparse qcow2 files to simulate large virtual disks (18TB each by default) for testing ZFS. These virtual disks only consume actual host storage space when data is written to them, with each empty disk requiring only 2-3MB of real space. This allows you to experiment with massive albeit empty ZFS arrays without needing equivalent physical storage resources.

By default, the Vagrant VM will be configured with:

• 4 vCPU cores
• 4 GB of RAM
• 16 virtual disks (default size of 18TB each, sparse disks)

Quick Start

This quickstart demonstrates using zfs-kmod on Rocky Linux 9. Many professional environments standardize on RHEL-based infrastructure, making Rocky Linux an excellent choice for testing ZFS in enterprise-like settings. Get your test environment up and running with these steps:

• Reset the environment if needed

  vagrant destroy -f
  

• (Optional) override the VAGRANT_BOX to Rocky Linux

  echo "VAGRANT_BOX: rockylinux/9" > .vagrant.yml
  

• Bring up the VM

  vagrant up
  

• After booting, login to the VM

  vagrant ssh
  

• Look at /etc/os-release to double check you are on Rocky Linux

  cat /etc/os-release
  

• Load the ZFS module (already loaded by default on Debian)

  lsmod | grep zfs
  sudo modprobe zfs
  lsmod | grep zfs
  

• Verify no pools exist and identify the persistent device names to use

  lsblk
  zpool status
  ls -al /dev/disk/by-id/
  

• Create a ZFS pool of 2x raidz2 vdevs with a spare disk

  sudo zpool create \
    -o ashift=12 \
    -O compression=lz4 \
    -O canmount=off \
    -O mountpoint=none \
    tank \
    raidz2 /dev/disk/by-id/virtio-VDZA{A..E} \
    raidz2 /dev/disk/by-id/virtio-VDZA{F..J} \
    spare /dev/disk/by-id/virtio-VDZAK
  

• Check the disks and zpool

  lsblk
  zpool status
  zfs list
  

• Create and mount a dataset

  sudo zfs create -o mountpoint=/srv/test tank/test
  zfs list
  

• Add another vdev

  sudo zpool add tank raidz2 /dev/disk/by-id/virtio-VDZA{L..P}
  zpool status
  zfs list
  

Configuration Overrides

You can override the default settings by creating a .vagrant.yml file with the following available settings:

• VAGRANT_NAME
  • Default: zfstest
  • The hostname for the virtual machine
• VAGRANT_BOX
  • Default: debian/bookworm64
  • Also tested with rockylinux/9
• VAGRANT_PROV
  • Default: true
  • Whether to provision the VM with ZFS packages
• VAGRANT_CPUS
  • Default: 4
  • Number of vCPU cores for the VM
• VAGRANT_MEM
  • Default: 4096 (4 GB)
  • Memory allocation for the VM in MB
• VAGRANT_SH
  • Default: (empty)
  • Optional shell script in ./scratch to run during provisioning
• NUM_DISKS
  • Default: 16
  • Number of virtual disks to create (max 676)
• DISK_SIZE
  • Default: 16763G
  • Size of each virtual disk (sparse allocation)
  • Derived from: 18 TB x (1000^4 / 1024^4) = 16.37 TiB or ~16763 GiB

Copyright and License

Copyright (C) 2025 Kris Lamoureux

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, version 3 of the License.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.