Disk configuration recommendations

[Steve Bertrand]

Steve Bertrand wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> Do you have any recommendations on how I should proceed? Hardware RAID, 
> ZFS or GEOM?

To answer my own post...

After a day of research, I decided upon ZFS.

I configured a raidz pool using all four entire disks.

I've put /boot on a USB thumb stick which I boot from, which allows me 
to mount / and the rest of the system directly from the ZFS pool.

This prevents me from having to have a UFS slice on one of the disks, or 
install another hard drive just to run the system from.

The idea was essentially copied from how I run my GELI systems. Boot 
from USB stick that contains the encryption key. Once the system is 
booted, I take the USB stick with me, which prevents access to the data 
if the machine is shut down.

Steve