Pool Creation¶

Overview¶

Create a ZFS pool from:

Remaining ~1 TB on internal NVMe (partition)
Entire 4 TB secondary NVMe (whole disk)

Prerequisites

If using a partition from your boot disk, see Disk Partitioning first.

Install ZFS¶

sudo apt install -y zfsutils-linux

Identify Disks¶

List block devices to see partitions:

lsblk

Get persistent disk and partition IDs:

ls -la /dev/disk/by-id/ | grep nvme

Example output:

nvme-Samsung_SSD_990_PRO_2TB_XXXXX -> ../../nvme0n1
nvme-Samsung_SSD_990_PRO_2TB_XXXXX-part1 -> ../../nvme0n1p1
nvme-Samsung_SSD_990_PRO_2TB_XXXXX-part2 -> ../../nvme0n1p2
nvme-Samsung_SSD_990_PRO_2TB_XXXXX-part3 -> ../../nvme0n1p3
nvme-Samsung_SSD_990_PRO_2TB_XXXXX-part4 -> ../../nvme0n1p4
nvme-Samsung_SSD_990_PRO_4TB_YYYYY -> ../../nvme1n1

For this setup, you need:

nvme-...-part4 - ZFS partition on internal NVMe
nvme-..._4TB_... - Entire secondary NVMe

Use disk IDs

Always use /dev/disk/by-id/ paths, not /dev/nvme0n1 which can change between boots.

Create Pool¶

Single Pool (No Redundancy)¶

For this setup, we prioritize capacity over redundancy:

sudo zpool create \
    -o ashift=12 \
    -O atime=off \
    -O compression=lz4 \
    -O xattr=sa \
    -O acltype=posixacl \
    tank \
    /dev/disk/by-id/nvme-internal-part4 \
    /dev/disk/by-id/nvme-secondary

Options Explained¶

Option	Purpose
`ashift=12`	4K sector alignment
`atime=off`	Disable access time updates
`compression=lz4`	Enable compression
`xattr=sa`	Store extended attributes in inodes
`acltype=posixacl`	Enable POSIX ACLs

Verify Pool¶

Check pool status:

zpool status tank

Expected output:

  pool: tank
 state: ONLINE
config:

        NAME                                    STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        tank                                    ONLINE       0     0     0
          nvme-Samsung_SSD_990_PRO_2TB-part4    ONLINE       0     0     0
          nvme-Samsung_SSD_990_PRO_4TB          ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors

Check pool capacity:

zpool list tank

Verify properties were applied:

zfs get compression,atime,xattr,acltype tank

Set Mount Point¶

sudo zfs set mountpoint=/mnt/tank tank

Auto-Import on Boot¶

ZFS pools import automatically via systemd. Verify:

systemctl status zfs-import-cache.service
systemctl status zfs-mount.service

Pool Health¶

Check regularly:

# Pool status
zpool status

# I/O statistics
zpool iostat 1

# Scrub for errors
sudo zpool scrub tank

No Redundancy

This pool has no redundancy. Data protection relies on snapshots and backups.