Creating ZFS storage pools in Oracle Solaris 11 is similar to creating pools in Oracle Solaris 10. The following sections provide summary information about preparing disks for a ZFS root pool and non-root pools.
Review the following general pool device configuration recommendations:
Create non-root pools by using whole disks, which are easier to manage than disk slices. For example, you can easily create a mirrored storage pool with four devices as follows:
# zpool create tank mirror c0t1d0 c0t2d0 mirror c1t1d0 c1t2d0
When ZFS storage pools are created with whole disks, the disks are labeled with an EFI label rather than an SMI label. You can identify an EFI label by the lack of cylinder information in the disk label as displayed in the format utility, as shown in the following example:
partition> print Current partition table (original): Total disk sectors available: 286478269 + 16384 (reserved sectors) Part Tag Flag First Sector Size Last Sector 0 usr wm 256 136.60GB 286478302 1 unassigned wm 0 0 0 2 unassigned wm 0 0 0 3 unassigned wm 0 0 0 4 unassigned wm 0 0 0 5 unassigned wm 0 0 0 6 unassigned wm 0 0 0 8 reserved wm 286478303 8.00MB 286494686
Whenever possible, create non-root pools with whole disks.
Oracle Solaris releases support advanced format disks in addition to traditional 512n disks. See Using Advanced Format Disks in Managing Devices in Oracle Solaris 11.2 .