> From: Tom Limoncelli [mailto:[email protected]]
> 
> On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 7:06 AM, Edward Ned Harvey
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> > My expectation was that these would all be identical:
> >
> > a/.snapshot/vol0_deleteme/b/c/d.txt
> > a/e/.snapshot/vol0_deleteme/c/d.txt
> > a/e/c/.snapshot/vol0_deleteme/d.txt
> 
> I agree.
> 
> The issue is that zfs and netapp implement snapshots in entirely
> different ways.  A zfs snapshot appears at at the root of the file
> system (in one pre-defined place, per file system).  On a Netapp, the
> ".snapshot" directory is a magically thing that exists in every
> directory.  It doesn't show up in opendir()/readdir() otherwise "find"
> would find it over, and over, and over, and over.  You'd basically
> never finish your find!
> 
> (Ok, opendir()/readdir() does reveal a ".snapshot" entry in some
> conditions... like at a mount point).
> 
> These subtle features of NetApp are very nice.  When you get your
> first netapp it works great, and then you keep discovering nice
> touches like this that make you more and more impressed.

Quoi???
I was concluding precisely the opposite.  Namely:  To have the .snapshot
directory in every directory is nice and convenient for user access, but if
a user can "mv" some directory and suddenly it's not being backed up
anymore, not included in the previous snaps of the parent directory ...

I think it sounds like the Netapp implementation is something I would call
"broken" albeit more convenient from a user perspective.  Personally I
choose reliability over convenience any day.  Especially when it comes to
backups.  

Which means I'm more and more in favor of ZFS instead of Netapp.

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