ZFS raid write performance?

[Quartz]

> I'd go with something similar to how the machine will be used in production.

Hrmm, I was hoping for a quickie synthetic test just to gauge if the 
write speed was anywhere near as low as the network.

> Also, ZFS has the ability to detect sequences of zeros and optimize the
> writing of them.

Yeah, I had a vague memory of something like that, which is why I asked.

>Make sure the amount copied to the machine is, oh, say, at least
> twice (or maybe thrice?) the amount of RAM in the server just to be sure
> you've defeated any caching.

That's... not going to be easy. I don't have that much data broken into 
files of that size kicking around yet. It won't necessarily be a 
"production" test either, given that most clients will be transferring 
only a few gigs over at a time.