ZFS Boot Support from Installer

[Steve Bertrand]

Jason Garrett wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 11:48, Tim Gustafson <tjg at soe.ucsc.edu> wrote:
> 
>> Hi,
>>
>> I was wondering if there was a plan or time line in place to support ZFS
>> boot partitions in the installer.  I Googled around a bit and found some
>> how-to documents for setting it up in a hacky kind of way, but the
>> impression I got is that support for ZFS partitions is coming to the
>> installer in perhaps 7.3 or 8.0, and I wanted to confirm or dispel that myth
>> before I go forward using the hacky method.
> 
> 
> I wouldn't recommend using zfs at all right now, unless you want random
> crashes and lots of missing data.. ESPECIALLY in 8.0,1,2 versions.

Do you have significant, long-term experience with "random crashes and
lots of missing data"?

I have nothing but good things to say about ZFS. I've been using it
since 7.0, and one box in particular is put under extreme duress doing
network backups daily. Since originally tuned, it has been just as
stable as any other box we own.

This particular box is configured as Tim's is in another post he wrote
(7.2, RAIDZ, boot from UFS flash), and writes at ~160MBps for 6-8
consecutive hours per day.

What I would recommend is if you go with -CURRENT and boot from ZFS on a
box going into production, ensure that you have very up-to-date backups,
stored in a method in which you could very quickly replicate onto
another box in case of emergency.

Steve
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