Sanoid is a policy-driven snapshot management tool for ZFS filesystems.
You can use Sanoid to create, automatically thin, and monitor snapshots and pool health from a single eminently human-readable TOML config file at /etc/sanoid/sanoid.conf. A typical Sanoid system would have a single cron job:
```
* * * * * /usr/local/bin/sanoid --cron
```
And its /etc/sanoid/sanoid.conf might look something like this:
```
[data/home]
use_template = production
[data/images/win2012]
use_template = production
[data/images/win7-spice]
use_template = production
hourly = 4
#############################
# templates below this line #
#############################
[template_production]
hourly = 36
daily = 30
monthly = 3
yearly = 0
autosnap = yes
autoprune = yes
```
Which would be enough to tell sanoid to take and keep 36 hourly snapshots, 30 dailies, 3 monthlies, and no yearlies. Except in the case of data/images/win7-spice, which only keeps 4 hourlies for whatever reason.
Sanoid also includes a replication tool, syncoid, which facilitates the asynchronous incremental replication of ZFS filesystems. A typical syncoid command might look like this:
```
syncoid data/images/vm backup/images/vm
```
Which would replicate the specified ZFS filesystem (aka dataset) from the data pool to the backup pool on the local system, or