ZFS - whole disk or partition or BSD slice?

[Michael Sierchio]

On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 5:36 PM, Shane Ambler <FreeBSD at shaneware.biz> wrote:

> I recall reading that using partitions for zfs on FreeBSD was as good as
> full disks.

No, it isn't - ZFS can fully utilize disk caches when presented with
whole devices. There are possible reasons to create partitions - one
being that if an unfriendly OS sees the device, it won't try to
initialize it if it sees a partition map.  Another is using a cheap
RAID controller that can't be fully disabled - in which case you
generally need to create a partition that doesn't include the last few
sectors of the disk, where such controllers keep magic data.

- M