Can someone eli5 zfs or provide more info?

[Verme123]

Let me start by saying I don't have experience with zfs, so I'm looking for some info. As you can see from the attachment, I have 1 large xfs data array. I have 2 new disks in it, which allows me to empty 2 others at the same time if needed using Unbalance. I'm wondering if it's worth changing to zfs for it's added resiliency benefits. Speed is not a huge concern for me, although I don't want to slow down to a crawl. My questions are:

 

1) If I make 1 large zfs pool, can I add drives as I go along like I currently can with the xfs setup?

2) I'm assuming I'd have to do 1 or 2 drives at a time and spend forever copying files over should I change formats?

3) Are parity drives needed anymore, or can I recover the 32tb used by parity currently?

 

I may be way off base and have no issues leaving things the way they are, but zfs is the buzzword for the last while, it seems worth checking out now. I apologise in advance if this post makes no sense, I don't know what I don't know ... thanks.

[JorgeB]

11 hours ago, Verme said:

1) If I make 1 large zfs pool, can I add drives as I go along like I currently can with the xfs setup?

zfs can be used in the array or pools, but you cannot have a multi device zfs pool in the array, see here for some more info.