Having become disillusioned with hacking Buffalo NAS devices, I've decided to roll my own Home server. After some research, I have settled on an HP Proliant Microserver with Ubuntu Server and ZFS (OS on 1 Ext4 disk, Data on 3 RAID-Z disks).

As Joel Spolsky and Geoff Atwood say with regards to backup, I can't rest until I have done a restore in all of the failure scenarios that I am seeking to protect against.

Q: How to configure Ubuntu Server to recognise a pre-existing RAID-Z array?

Clearly if one of the data disks die - then that is a resilvering scenario, which is well documented. If two of the data disks die, then I am into regular backup/restore land. If the OS dies and I can restore, also an easy scenario.

But if the OS dies and I can't restore, then I need to recreate an Ubuntu server. But how do I get this to recognise my RAID-Z array? Is the necessary configuration information stored within and across the RAID-Z array and simply need to be found (if so, how)? Or does it reside on the OS ext4 disk (in which case how do I recreate it)?