Starting with ZFS on fresh install

[Mike Clarke]

On Monday 28 Jan 2013 12:55:06 Carmel wrote:

> I have a spare amd64 PC that I want to install FreeBSD 9.x on. I want
> it to utilize ZFS right from the start. There are two HD's in the PC.
> One will handle the "/var" partition and the other everything else.

If you're going to be using ZFS then you'll probably be better off not having 
separate partitions and letting ZFS manage space allocation if you want to 
limit the size of /var or any other part of the system, You can install 
everything on a single disk to start with. Afterwards you can dynamically 
increase the size of the pool if you need more space by using the "zpool add" 
command to add the second drive into the storage pool. Alternatively if you 
have enough space and the second drive is at least as large as the first you 
can make your system more resilient by using it to create a mirrored pool with 
"zpool attach".

It's well worth doing some initial reading about ZFS before you start so you 
have a good idea of how to make the best use of it, these links could be a 
good starting point:

   * the FreeBSD ZFS wiki - https://wiki.freebsd.org/ZFS
   * Oracle's ZFS Administration Guide - 
http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/download/Community+Group+zfs/docs/zfsadmin.pdf

-- 
Mike Clarke