The switch to new hardware finally happened. This is the first server to run FreeBSD/amd64 under my supervision. ZFS is used for all storage on this server. I chose to install the newly released FreeBSD/amd64 9.0-RELEASE, before upgrading to FreeBSD/amd64 9.0-STABLE by source. It’s just a matter of preference, given my 13-14 years of experience with FreeBSD.

Item Make and model
Chassis Cooler Master Centurion 5 II Midi Tower
PSU Corsair HX 850W PSU
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3, Socket-1155
CPU Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2400 CPU @ 3.10GHz
Memory Two Crucial DDR3 1333MHz 4GB KIT, CL9 (CT2KIT25664BA1339)
Hard drives Five Seagate Barracuda® 500GB
(<ST500DM002-1BD142 KC45> ATA-8 SATA 3.x device)
According to smartctl, these drives uses:
Sector Sizes: 512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
DVD Writer Sony Optiarc DVD±RW Writer, AD-5280S

The drives are organized as follows:

gpart create -s gpt /dev/ada0
gpart create -s gpt /dev/ada1

gpart add -b   40 -s      256 -t freebsd-boot          ada0
gpart add -b   40 -s      256 -t freebsd-boot          ada1
gpart add -b 2048 -s 33554432 -t freebsd-swap -l swap0 ada0
gpart add -b 2048 -s 33554432 -t freebsd-swap -l swap1 ada1
gpart add                     -t freebsd-zfs           ada0
gpart add                     -t freebsd-zfs           ada1

gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptzfsboot -i 1 ada0
gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptzfsboot -i 1 ada1

gnop create -S 4096 /dev/ada0p3
gnop create -S 4096 /dev/ada1p3
gnop create -S 4096 /dev/ada2
gnop create -S 4096 /dev/ada3
gnop create -S 4096 /dev/ada4

zpool create -o cachefile=/tmp/zpool.cache -m /tmp/zroot enterprise_zroot mirror /dev/ada0p3.nop /dev/ada1p3.nop
zpool create -o cachefile=/tmp/zpool.cache -m /tmp/zdata enterprise_zdata raidz1 /dev/ada2.nop /dev/ada3.nop /dev/ada4.nop

zpool export enterprise_zroot
zpool export enterprise_zdata

gnop destroy /dev/ada0p3.nop
gnop destroy /dev/ada1p3.nop
gnop destroy /dev/ada2.nop
gnop destroy /dev/ada3.nop
gnop destroy /dev/ada4.nop

zpool import -o cachefile=/tmp/zpool.cache enterprise_zroot
zpool import -o cachefile=/tmp/zpool.cache enterprise_zdata

Next, a pretty usual FreeBSD ZFS organization occured. Most of the files are stored in the enterprise_zroot pool, but more important things like /home, /usr/local/pgsql, /usr/local/www and /var/db/mysql are stored in the enterprise_zdata pool. See my blog entry from October 2011 to get an idea of what filesystems I create and how.

More description of my setup might follow if and when I get time to type it.