Mismatched Replication Levels

Creating pools with virtual devices of different replication levels is not recommended. The zpool command tries to prevent you from accidentally creating a pool with mismatched levels of redundancy. If you try to create a pool with such a configuration, you see errors similar to the following:

# zpool create tank c1t0d0 mirror c2t0d0 c3t0d0
invalid vdev specification
use '-f' to override the following errors:
mismatched replication level: both disk and mirror vdevs are present
# zpool create tank mirror c1t0d0 c2t0d0 mirror c3t0d0 c4t0d0 c5t0d0
invalid vdev specification
use '-f' to override the following errors:
mismatched replication level: 2-way mirror and 3-way mirror vdevs are present

You can override these errors with the -f option, but you should avoid this practice. The command also warns you about creating a mirrored or RAID-Z pool using devices of different sizes. Although this configuration is allowed, mismatched levels of redundancy result in unused disk space on the larger device. The -f option is required to override the warning.