ZFS for a desktop computer

[Kris Kennaway]

Nicolas Martyanoff wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm thinking about switching my main desktop to FreeBSD for various
> reasons (main one, I love it on my laptop and server), and I've been
> considering using ZFS. I'd like to have a disk-modular system, ie.:
> 
> - Being able to have mirroring.
> - Being able to add new disks without effort.
> - Being able to add new disks AND mirroring disks (spare disks ?) at
>   the same time.
> 
> I'm gonna begin with 2x 1TB disks with mirroring, and I'd like to be
> able to add, if needed, new disks, for example 2x 1.5TB to get 2.5TB
> diskspace fully mirrored. The whole process shouldn't need to reinstall
> the system, or to change the slice/partition layout, ie. be totally
> transparent for the data.
> And for this particular need, ZFS seems to be the way to go.
> 
> However, I'm a bit worried about FreeBSD's ZFS implementation:
> 
> - I've got a 64bits dual core 2GHz CPU, but can't use an amd64 FreeBSD
>   since Xen, NVidia drivers and wine don't work on it; but ZFS is said
>   to be unsuitable for i386.
> 
> - It's said you can't boot from a ZFS pool.
> 
> So could you please tell me if using ZFS is ok for me, or should I use
> a gmirror system (but I don't think I can easily add new disks to this).

It is tough to get ZFS to fit on an 32-bit system because of memory and 
address space limitations of the architecture.

Kris