A systems administrator is rebuilding a Linux-based backup server that stores terabytes of compressible log archives. The RAID-6 array is exposed to the OS through LVM, and management wants to reclaim space by enabling transparent, inline compression that can be toggled per dataset without re-formatting. The solution must also provide block-level checksums to detect silent corruption, and it must work without adding third-party utilities or hardware accelerators. Which file system should the administrator choose for the new logical volume?
ZFS natively supports copy-on-write storage with per-dataset settings for transparent compression (lz4, gzip, zstd and others). When compression is enabled, data are compressed before being written and automatically decompressed when read, requiring no application changes. Every block also carries a checksum, allowing ZFS to detect (and, if redundancy exists, repair) silent bit-rot.
ext4 does not implement transparent compression in the mainline kernel; VMFS offers no file-system-level compression, and Microsoft's ReFS likewise omits compression in current production builds (only deduplication is available). Therefore, ZFS is the only option listed that meets all of the stated requirements.