I have a FreeBSD file server with ZFS on root. After getting used to ZFS for a while, I find myself wanting it on my 2015 MacBook Pro. I just have a single 1 TB SSD, so this won't be about redundancy. I do, however, want to make use of snapshots, and send the snapshots to my FreeBSD file server.
I've read through the wiki and a bunch of forum posts, and the scenarios I come across seem to be either raidz data disks, or zfs on boot. I am interested in more of a "middle ground".
What I am thinking of is keeping the "Macintosh HD" volume at its default read-only APFS, and making the "Macintosh HD - Data" volume ZFS. So what I _think_ this would entail is something like:
1. Back up the volumes separately
2. Boot from my backup, launch disk utility. Partition internal disk to have an APFS partition, and an HFS partition.
3. Restore "Macintosh HD" to APFS partition.
4. Create a ZFS pool from the HFS partition.
5. Restore "Macintosh HD - Data" to the new ZFS pool.
One thing that I think is missing from this is, how will MacOS know to mount the Data pool? I'm assuming that all of the ZFS config and initialization will be on Data. So I have a chicken-and-egg problem.
So that's one approach - create as big of a ZFS partition as possible. Another possibility is to retain the default "Macintosh HD" and "Macintosh HD - Data" volume, but create a separate ZFS partition for my data.
Anyway, does anyone have any guidance for using ZFS for a single, internal drive? I didn't really find anything in the wiki about this scenario, beyond the ZFS on Root (and maybe that's the way to go?)