RAID required for ZFS?
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I run pfSense for my home network using a completely solid-state setup. I started off with a Jetway NF9HG-2930 motherboard with an Intel Celeron N2930 CPU with only passive cooling. I have 8 GB of RAM and a 200ish GB mSATA SSD as my system storage. When upgrading to 2.6.0, I had heard about the ZFS filesystem as the new default filesystem and thought I'd go with it. I downloaded the USB drive image file and placed my previously backed up "config.xml" in the "/conf" folder of the FAT32 partition of the burned USB thumb drive. When I tried to re-install pfSense 2.6.0 from booting off the thumb drive, it appeared that I needed to have at least two or more drives to install ZFS on, not just my single mSATA drive. After exhausting all the options I could figure out, I ultimately just installed the UFS filesystem, which is the same as before.
From what it appeared to me, it required either a RAID 0, RAID 1, or RAIDz1,2, or 3 configurations in order to install ZFS. While the motherboard has two SATA ports on it, I don't have any way to power any additional SATA drives. The motherboard does have a mini-PCIe slot next to the mSATA slot but I've looked through the manual and I can't find anything saying if I could or couldn't put a second mSATA SSD in the mini-PCIe slot, as they appear to use the same physical form factor.
What I am hoping to understand is is whether or not I NEED to install a second drive to install ZFS filesystem and if so, will the Jetway motherboard support two mSATA drives; one on the mSATA slot and one in the mini-PCIe slot. I really want to keep the system solid-state.
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@ronrn18 You do not need two drives.
Just select Raid 0 (striped), and the install is “striped” across your single drive (ie: no raid is actually done) :-) -
@ronrn18 said in RAID required for ZFS?:
What I am hoping to understand is is whether or not I NEED to install a second drive to install ZFS filesystem
You do not.
It just means that if your one drive fails, you lose everything. As ZFS prides itself on keeping your data safe, you will likely see warnings going with this options, but it's perfectly fine.
