You haven't stated what you intend to use your pc for and what your
requirements are. Without that I don't see how anyone can come up with
an optimal configuration. So... what do you plan to do with your pc?
Do you want the fastest performance and don't care about anything else?
use all SSDs and add them as single vdevs without redundancy but make
sure you have a good external backup.
Do you want really faster performance and care about uptime? Use all
SSDs and add them in mirrored pairs.
Do you need a lot of storage space and don't want to spend thousands on
SSDs? use the included ssd for your boot drive and set up a data pool of
2x2 mirror.
I could go on and on. because there are many different uses for consumer
pcs. For most people, a single ssd and a single data drive will be good
as long as they have external backup.
Today's consumer level HDDs are pretty fast. They get slow as they fill
up. If the drive is only half filled and defraged it will perform faster
than if it was 90% full.
Unfortunately zfs doesn't have a defrag utility yet so if performance is
really a concern maybe short stroking it to half size might be good.
Using the other half as a hot spare as you suggested seems interesting
if the drive is in a redundant configuration.
If you really need performance so bad that you're considering short
stroking your drives just get more SSDs.
The gateway pc you linked to comes with 1 80 GB SSD and 1 1TB HDD.
In most configurations you'd install the OS on the SSD and use the HDD
for data and that configuration will be good for most applications.
I don't see the point of dual booting any more. If you want OpenSolaris
to be your main OS but want to be able to run windows there are other
options like Wine and virtualization like VirtualBox.
_______________________________________________
zfs-discuss mailing list
zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org
http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
