install FreeBSD with 2IDE + 2 SATA

C

cosmin

Hello world,

First of all I would like to say to everybody. I'm new to FreeBSD (I didn't installed yet :) ). I've been using linux at home for some time now. Recently, I've decided to setup a home server (running as web server and nas). I already have a NAS (dlink) with 2 SATA drives of 1 TB each. They are setup on RAID1. I also have 2 old IDE drives of 80 GB each.

To install the IDE drives, I've bought a PCI controller.

I would like to know if the following configuration is possible:
  1. I want to install the OS (UFS) onto IDE drives. Of course, i would like to have them in RAID1.
  2. For SATA drives, I was thinking creating a zfs pool and have them in RAID1. (I'm sorry if I sound like an idiot, I'm a little confused about zfs pool concept)

Thank you in advance for your help/sugestions/guidance
Cosmin
 
This page in the Handbook explains the concepts behind GEOM Mirror, the primary software RAID1 solution for FreeBSD.

This page explains how to convert a single-disk install of FreeBSD into a mirrored install, using gmirror(8). I've used the scripts on this page several times to create gmirror'd FreeBSD setups. Works really well.

Once you have a working gmirror setup and can boot into it reliably, then just build the ZFS pool using the SATA drives.

What you want to do is definitely possible, and not that hard.
 
Do yourself a favor and leave the SATA disks without partitions. Use glabel(8) to label the two disk, for example with names disk0 and disk1. Not using partitions makes working with ZFS easier but you still want to have a surefire way of identifying the disks, hence the labels.

# glabel label disk0 /dev/ada0
# glabel label disk1 /dev/ada1

This assumes that the SATA disks are ada0 and ada1, they might be ada2 and ada3 in your system because the two PATA disks.

And then build the ZFS pool with:

# zpool create mypool mirror label/disk0 label/disk1

Now if one of the disks break all you have to with the replacement disk is to label it as above and insert it into the mirror vdev with zpool(8), no mucking with partitions.
 
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