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New vs old generations
This is the nicest and shortest description of how "new generation" filesystems differ from older ones. It's focused on ZFS but not really specific to it. Bookmark that page because I found it un-googlable for some unknown reason.
https://illumos.org/books/zfs-admin/zfsover-1.html#zfsover-2
ZFS eliminates the volume management altogether. Instead of forcing you to create virtualized volumes, ZFS aggregates devices into a storage pool....
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ZFS is a transactional file system, which means that the file system state is always consistent on disk. Traditional file systems overwrite data in place, which means that if the machine loses power, for example, between the time a data block is allocated and when it is linked into a directory, the file system will be left in an inconsistent state....
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With a transactional file system, data is managed using copy on write semantics. Data is never overwritten, and any sequence of operations is either entirely committed or entirely ignored. This mechanism means that the file system can never be corrupted through accidental loss of power or a system crash. So, no need for a fsck equivalent exists.
