Ubuntu Server ZFS on Root

This was an experiment I wanted to try installing ZFS on root in an Ubuntu. A couple things to note. This will be Ubuntu 22.04 on a VM on top of ESXI using 4 virtual disks. Also, I'm going to use ZFS native encryption for no reason other than it sounds cool. 

Preparation

Grab an Ubuntu Desktop Live installer (im using 22.04 for this) and start up a skeleton with 4 drives and the ISO mounted as an optical or USB device. 

• Since I want to use EFI. In ESXI go to Edit>VM Options>Boot Options and choose EFI. BIOS will be the default.

• Next, since ESXI doesnt create UUIDs for drives unless you tell it to, go to Edit>VM Options>Advanced>Configuration Parameters and add disk.EnableUUID = "TRUE" to your vm configuration.

Live Boot

From here we can boot the live disk. In your Grub menu make sure to go to Try or Install Ubuntu. And go to Try Ubuntu in the installer. Because there are some pretty long commands here i want to be able to have copy/paste so it's a good idea to install Openssh as well as the full vim package, since the live disk only ships with vim-tiny. 

#Update your packages repos

sudo apt update

#Put a password on the Ubuntu account

passwd

#Install the packages

sudo apt install -y openssh-server vim

#Become Root

sudo -i

#Install the ZFS packages you need

apt install --yes debootstrap gdisk zfsutils-linux

systemctl stop zed