RootOnZFS Installation instructions

V

Virtualisor

I'm looking for information on how to install FreeBSD on a clean system which in this case would be used as a NAS with the following criteria:

1. Disk(s) can be partitioned/sliced so as to NOT use the whole disk for zroot.
2. The operating system can optionally be split into multiple pools e.g. zroot, zusr, zvar, ztmp, etc
3. Each Pool may be mirrored (or use other RAID modes) where multiple physical disks are present.

Having used various Unix and Linux operating systems, I prefer to be able to exert a certain measure of control over how storage is allocated out, particularly to avoid performance related problems like fragmentation, spanning and systems locking up if the disk runs out of space due to issues like excessive logging!.

I've found recent instructions on a manual install of FreeBSD using a single partition/slice/pool rather than the whole disk which meets criteria 1.

I've found somewhat dated instructions which are around 6 years old for a much older version of FreeBSD

I've not been able to find ANY information on installations using multiple pools for different parts of the Operating System at all.

Can you point me towards updated information on installing using mirrored disks and multiple pools.

Thankyou
 
Virtualisor said:
I've not been able to find ANY information on installations using multiple pools for different parts of the Operating System at all.
Click to expand...
Because it doesn't really make sense; pool is a collection of storage space, that's all. What is the real problem you are trying to solve with that idea?
 
Well, I suppose you aren't familiar with ZFS?

Consider to find information about boot environment. Then, you will realize that split the system into multiple pools is perhaps not the idea of the year.

If I was you, I will make several installations of FreeBSD, maybe on virtual machines, to begin with ZFS and FreeBSD.

There isn't any problem of disk room if you take almost all the disk for ZFS. This is not true if you create partitions for this and that.
 
Pools. Boot Environments. Do your home work. The default install of FreeBSD on ZFS sets things up correctly to use Boot Environments. Muck with this at your peril.
That said the default install pretty much create separate pools for "stuff that should be separate"
/usr/home
/usr/ports
/usr/src
stuff in /var
From a "standard" viewpoint, separate the OS from the data. That is what happens by default. Now, user home directories, trivial to add extra devices and move that dataset to a different zpool.

Disk partitioning: pretty much standard, if you create a freebsd-zfs type partition in gpart you use that for creation of the zpool.

My opinion/rule of thumb is don't overcomplicate things right off the bat. Do a default install, see what you get, then maybe tweak after really thinking hard about it.
 
mer said:
That said the default install pretty much create separate pools for "stuff that should be separate"
Click to expand...
Tiny correction, it separates that into datasets on the same pool. Which really makes sense, if you think about why people use flexible volume management instead of inflexible partitioning ?
 
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