From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Feb 19 22:00:11 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DB53A106564A for ; Sat, 19 Feb 2011 22:00:11 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from gull@gull.us) Received: from mail-ey0-f182.google.com (mail-ey0-f182.google.com [209.85.215.182]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6DDE98FC15 for ; Sat, 19 Feb 2011 22:00:11 +0000 (UTC) Received: by eyg7 with SMTP id 7so94579eyg.13 for ; Sat, 19 Feb 2011 14:00:10 -0800 (PST) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.14.11.147 with SMTP id 19mr2546762eex.14.1298152810130; Sat, 19 Feb 2011 14:00:10 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.14.119.1 with HTTP; Sat, 19 Feb 2011 14:00:10 -0800 (PST) X-Originating-IP: [64.81.163.112] In-Reply-To: References: <201102192012.p1JKCKnP038248@mail.r-bonomi.com> Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2011 14:00:10 -0800 Message-ID: From: David Brodbeck To: FreeBSD Questions Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Subject: Re: ZFS-only booting on FreeBSD X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2011 22:00:11 -0000 On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 1:52 PM, Daniel Staal wrote: > I see the advantage, and that it offers higher levels of resiliency and i= f > properly handled should cause no problems. =A0I just hate relying on huma= ns to > remember things and follow directions. =A0That's what computers are for. > Repairing a failed disk in a ZFS boot pool requires a human to remember t= o > look for directions in an unusual place, and then follow them correctly. That's why I generally prefer to boot off hardware RAID 1 in situations where reliability is critical. There are too many fiddly unknown factors in booting off software RAID. Even if you do everything else right, the BIOS may refuse to look beyond the failed drive and boot off the good one. I save the software RAID for data spindles (which I tend to keep separate from the boot/OS spindles, anyway.) 2-port 3ware cards are relatively inexpensive, and well supported by every OS I've used except Solaris. If you're going for RAID 1 you don't need expensive battery-backed cache.