How to use ZFS on Ubuntu 16.04?

Solution 1:

First off, use ZFS only if you really want it. See the Use Cases to know if you really need ZFS.

ZFS is supported only in 64-bit Ubuntu 16.04 installs. To install it run:

sudo apt-get install zfsutils-linux

To learn more, you can see the reference on Ubuntu or this excellent documentation.

A good introduction can also be found here

Solution 2:

As root in an Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS this works:

apt update
apt install -y zfs

You are then done. You can check it is there by doing:

zfs list

you can then create a pool by doing:

zpool create -f zxavi /dev/sdb

or whatever disk you want to use; and after that:

zpool status

Boom, done!