Setting up ZFS - Filesystem Properties and Installing on Root

[APseudoUtopia]

On Sun, Nov 20, 2011 at 11:26 PM, Mehmet Erol Sanliturk
<m.e.sanliturk at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 20, 2011 at 10:34 PM, APseudoUtopia <apseudoutopia at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I'll be setting up a server with ZFS on 9.0-RELEASE (when it's
>> released...). I've never used ZFS before, and although I've been
>> reading quite a bit about it, I have some questions.
>>
>> My plan is to use RAID-Z1 across 4 disks. I'll be using GPT, and I
>> would like the root to be ZFS as well. I found a guide:
>> http://wiki.freebsd.org/RootOnZFS/GPTZFSBoot/RAIDZ1
>>
>> In step #4, it has you create boot, swap, and zfs partitions on all 3
>> (which would be 4 in my case) disks. Then, in step #5, you install the
>> bootloader into all 3 (4) drives. Why do you need boot and swap
>> partitions on EACH disk? It seems to me that you would only need disk
>> 1 to have boot, swap, and zfs, and the other 3 disks only have one
>> partition (using the entire drive) for zfs's pool. Does it have to do
>> with the RAIDZ1 setup? Even then, I don't understand it because it's
>> not disk mirroring, it's RAID. The BIOS is set to look on one specific
>> disk for the loader, not all of them. It seems I'm not understanding
>> something entirely here.
>
>
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> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:RAID
>
>
> If disk 1 fails , the computer ( BIOS ) will look disk 2 .
> If disk 2 fails , the computer ( BIOS ) will look disk 3 .
>
>
> If disk ( n - 1 ) fails , the computer ( BIOS ) will look disk ( n ) .
>

Ah! That makes sense. Thank you!