Hello Patrick and sboesch
Thanks about the idea of such guides.
Oracle offers excellent manuals. But they are sometimes no longer valid for Illumos based systems
and they are more a documentation for experienced Solaris admins.
Guides around ZFS on Illumos based systems, especially for beginners or people moving from
other systems are rare and well demanded. My own guides about How to setup a ZFS server and
How to setup a All-In-One system with ESXi were downloaded over 40000 times in december and
the interest in sites like zfsbuild.com are showing such interests.
Such guides especially from a user view are helpful for other user as well as for a developper as it
shows problems and opens eyes for things that can be improved for a better usability.
Basic setup, mirror of rpool, concept of pools, File-services like SMB, NFS, AFP with user or ACL problems,
advantages of Solaris based systems compared to other systems like ACL, Crossbow, the Solaris CIFS server
or blockbased services like iSCSI are of common interest as well as hints for daily management or
error handling on failed disks. Especially for pro-user, the use of OmniOS instead of OI seems
also an option. OmniOS is free and based on newer bits from Illumos and reduced to a minimal server
distribution. Omni offers a stable release with the option of payed support and bi-weekly updates.
I am on the way to move my own installations from OI to Omni for new installations as well - especially
since there is a solution and guide from Thomas Geppert howto patch ESXI 5.1 and install vmware-tools on Omni.
Let me know, if I can help.