ZFS for raid

[Polytropon]

On Tue, 15 Jan 2019 15:48:33 -0600, Paul Schmehl wrote:
> If you're going to setup drives with zfs for raid, do you need a hardware 
> controller? My impression is that you don't, but I want to know for sure 
> before I order a server.

You don't need it, and it's commonly preferred to _not_ use one.
Leave managing the drives to ZFS so it can impose its whole set
of features on the drives.

So if you have one in your system, don't use it. Set it to a
mode where all drives are reported individually to the system,
and _no_ kind of RAID management is performed by the controller.

The less interference, the better it is. :-)



> If there's no raid controller, can you setup raid using zfs during the OS 
> install?

Yes, bsdinstall allows this. But you can also set up ZFS with
shell commands.



> If you boot from the cd/dvd, do you get the option to configure 
> raid using zfs?

Yes, during bsdinstall or when exiting to the shell.

Helpful information can be found in section "2.6.4. Root-on-ZFS
Automatic Partitioning":

https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/bsdinstall-partitioning.html

More detailed information about the convenient command line
tools is also available:

https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/zfs.html



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...