ZFS snapshots based on CoW are superiour to VSS previous states as they work only on a good will base on open files while ZFS snapshots represent simply the last state of the fiesystem prior a datablock write.
Luckily OpenZFS on Windows is near (currently release candidate 11) with some remaining bugs around volume mount. If you avoid encrypted volumes not a serious problem, good enough for evaluation. Development is fast with a new release candidate every few weeks to adress remaining problems.
The sister project OpenZFS on OSX has already reached release state last week.
You can online expand a ZFS pool for years by replacing disks with larger ones or by adding vdevs. On current OpenZFS you can even expand a Raid-Z by adding disks to it.
To shrink a pool, you can remove vdevs. On OpenZFS this is limited to mirror vdevs, native ZFS from Oracle can remove Raid-Z.
Kernel integration is not so important as long as use distributions that include ZFS support at distribution level mainly Proxmox and TrueNAS or Ubuntu.
OpenZFS on Windows has reached release candidate state (rc11) with some remaining bugs around volume mount (nothing serious, avoid encryption atm). Development is very fast (a new rc every few weeks to fix remaining problems)
Paired with Storage Spaces to pool disks of any type or size with location, redundancy or tiering defined per Space, Windows is now a premium storage platform.
With a Windows Server ex a cheap 2022/2025 Essentials you additionally can use SMB Direct/RDMA with a performance up to 10 Gbyte/s over lan and virtual harddisks .vhdx as a zero config and faster alternative to iSCSI.
This is why I have ported me ZFS web-gui napp-it cs from Solaris to Windows to manage Storage Spaces and ZFS and remotely OpenZFS servers like Proxmox (free for noncommercial use)
Luckily OpenZFS on Windows is near (currently release candidate 11) with some remaining bugs around volume mount. If you avoid encrypted volumes not a serious problem, good enough for evaluation. Development is fast with a new release candidate every few weeks to adress remaining problems.
The sister project OpenZFS on OSX has already reached release state last week.
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