If you use drives of varying size, zfs will use the smallest capacity drives. Say you have 1TB + 2TB + 2TB, then ZFS create a raid with 1TB large drives. 3 x 1TB raid will be result.
One ZFS raid consists of vdevs, that is, a group of drives. That vdev can be configured as raidz1 (raid-5) or raidz2 (raid-6) or if you have two disks: as a mirror. Say you have 8 drives, and you create a zfs raid configured as raidz2 (raid-6). Then you can add a new group of drives, say 3 new drives configured as a raidz1. Then your zfs raid will consists of two groups of drives, 8 drives, and 3 drives. You can never change the number of disks in a group (can not decrease or increase). However, you can add a new group whenever you want. I suggest you install Solaris 11 Express in VirtualBox and play around. You can create empty files in Solaris, and then use them instead of hard drives. So, you can create a zfs raid with 8 files, and play around and make snapshots etc . Or install OpenIndiana, which is the free open sourced version of Solaris 11 Express. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
