How to built a fully encrypted file server with ZFS and Linux to avoid data loss and corruption

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Do you know if all the Data on your File Server is OK?

Unless you are already using ZFS, Btrfs or ReFS you don’t. If your file server is a couple of years old, there is a very good chance that your Data is NOT OK.

Your server hardware might tell you everything is OK but that does not really tell you much because none of your monitoring systems check the actual data.

ZFS on the other had knows if your data is ok and can even repair it. I upgraded my file server recently. All the old disks that were still in the pool at the time were OK according to their SMART values. yet look what the monthly check told me:scrub result old server

Just think about that: In just one month almost 2MB of data got corrupted. And right now you don’t know if your server has similar issues. If you did not know it yet this particular issue has a name: Bit Rot and it gets worse the older your current hardware is and more likely the larger your disks are.

If you want to avoid loosing your data this way you should think about building a ZFS based file server.