How to Identify Storage Requirements for Your ZFS Storage Pool

1. Determine available devices for your storage pool.

   Before creating a storage pool, you must determine which devices will store your data. These devices must be disks of at least 128 MB in size, and they must not be in use by other parts of the operating system. The devices can be individual slices on a preformatted disk, or they can be entire disks that ZFS formats as a single large slice.

   In the storage example in How to Create a ZFS Storage Pool, assume that the whole disks /dev/dsk/c1t0d0 and /dev/dsk/c2t0d0 are available for use.

   For more information about disks and how they are used and labeled, see Using Disks in a ZFS Storage Pool.

2. Choose data replication.

   ZFS supports multiple types of data replication, which determines the types of hardware failures the pool can withstand. ZFS supports nonredundant (striped) configurations, as well as mirroring and RAID-Z (a variation on RAID-5).

   In the storage example in How to Create a ZFS Storage Pool, basic mirroring of two available disks is used.

   For more information about ZFS replication features, see Replication Features of a ZFS Storage Pool.