[ZFS] Using SSD with partitions

[Patrick Donnelly]

Hi list,

I've got an array for home use where my boot drive (UFS) finally died.
I've decided to upgrade to a SSD for a replacement but am looking to
maybe simultaneously improving performance of my ZFS array. Naturally
a FreeBSD install doesn't use much space so partitioning the drive to
get maximum usage seems wise. I was thinking for a hypothetical 40GB
drive:

20GB -- FreeBSD / partition
2GB  -- ZFS ZIL
18GB -- ZFS Cache

What I'm wondering is if this will be a bad idea. I know that SSDs are
not designed to be written to *a lot*, which a ZIL will experience. Is
this a bad idea? I'm hoping for experiences from people in similar
scenarios. As I'm not an enterprise IT person who can't simply choose
to just throw more mon-- I mean SSDs -- at the problem, I need to be
efficient. :) [I'm thinking the cache drive partition might be
pointless as I don't think I'd benefit that much from it.]

Disclaimer: I've looked at a lot of guides, including the standard
best practices guide, and none of it seemed helpful for my particular
problem, especially given that I'm using FreeBSD.

Thanks for any advice,

-- 
- Patrick Donnelly