Follow-up install questions

[William A. Mahaffey III]

Pursuant to ongoing issues trying to install FreeBSD 9.3R on my Myth-TV 
box, I have some questions about provisioning another box, also w/ 9.3R. 
That box is AMD A-10 APU based, w/ 8X 1 TB 2.5" HDD's. Given the 
problems I am having getting the (smaller, simpler box) going. I am 
pondering using ZFS on the larger box. To that end, I have a couple of 
questions. ZFS supports (man page) 'unmirrored pools'. Is that 
tantamount to striped RAID ? If so, what sort of I/O performance can I 
look for there ? There was a lengthy thread a few weeks ago on ZFS & 
performance. I (think I) recall someone saying they used a bunch of 
1-HDD vdevs to get some semblance of good I/O performance w/ a RAIDZn 
configuration, is that (additional layer of config) actually required ? 
My man page says vdev's can be single devices or 'a collection of 
devices', with devices being disks (individual HDD's ?), files, mirrors, 
or raidz's. Are those mirrors necessarily ZFS mirrors, or can they be 
gmirrors ? I am interested in maximizing the size of the storage pool 
available, & the best I/O performance I can get. This box will be backed 
up across the LAN onto other boxen, so I am worrying less about HDD 
reliability & more about performance & max available GiB's/TiB's. TIA & 
have a good one.


-- 

	William A. Mahaffey III

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	"The M1 Garand is without doubt the finest implement of war
	 ever devised by man."
                            -- Gen. George S. Patton Jr.