How to Create a ZFS File System Snapshot

Starting in the OpenSolaris 2008.11 release, an automatic snapshot service is available to manage automatic snapshots. For more information, see http://wikis.sun.com/display/OpenSolarisInfo/How+to+Manage+Automatic+ZFS+Snapshots.

Start a privileged shell.
```
user@opensolaris:-$ pfexec bash
#
```
In this example, the bash shell is selected. You can choose to use any shell with the pfexec command. If you support multiple versions of the Solaris^TM OS, use the standard su – root command. The su command works on all Solaris versions.
Create a file system for storing data.
For example:
```
# /usr/sbin/zfs create rpool/export/home/data
```
Create a snapshot of a ZFS file system.
For example, a snapshot called data@0805 is created. It contains all of the file system data at the time that the snapshot was taken.
```
$ /usr/sbin/zfs snapshot rpool/export/home/data@0805
```

Verify the file system snapshot.

$ /usr/sbin/zfs list -t snapshot
NAME                         USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
rpool/export/home/data@0805      0      -  77.8M  -

(Optional) If you accidentally delete a file, you can restore it from the file system snapshot.
For example, file.3 is restored from the .zfs/snapshot/0805 directory.
```
$ pwd
/export/home/data
# cp .zfs/snapshot/0805/file.3 file.3
# ls /export/home/data
file.1  file.2  file.3
```
Tip - Review the automatic snapshot script that is included in this blog: http://blogs.sun.com/timf/entry/zfs_automatic_for_the_people.

For more information: