I have a NAS where I don't have a possibility to create and manage partitions (maybe I could with some hacks that I don't want to make). What ways to setup multiple ZFS pools with one partition each (for starters - just want to use deduplication) exist? The setup should work with the NAS, i.e. over network (I'd mount the images via NFS or cifs).

My ideas and associated issues so far:

• sparse files mounted over loop device (specifying sparse file directly as ZFS vdev doesn't work, see Can I choose a sparse file as vdev for a zfs pool?): problem that the name/number of the assigned loop device is anything but constant, not sure how increasing the number loop device with kernel parameter affects performance (there has to be a reason to limit it to 8 in the default value, right?)