[zfs-discuss] How do I protect my zfs pools?

[Donald Murray, P.Eng.]

Hi,

I may have lost my first zpool, due to ... well, we're not yet sure.
The 'zpool import tank' causes a panic -- one which I'm not even
able to capture via savecore.

I'm glad this happened when it did.

At home I am in the process of moving all my data from a Linux NFS
server to OpenSolaris. It's something I'd been meaning to do ever
since I heard Jeff Bonwick talk about ZFS at LISA '07.

My plan was:
- mirrored zfs pool on an OpenSolaris host, exported via NFS/Samba
- nearline amanda backups on the same host, but to an external eSATA
mirrored zfs pool
- archival amanda backups on my old Linux host

That plan would involve three zfs pools:
- root pool on OpenSolaris host
- mirrored storage pool on OpenSolaris host
- mirrored external pool

How do I protect these zfs pools? How do I prevent catastrophic loss
of the whole pool, as I appear to have just experienced? I know I can
always restore from backups but ... is there anything else I should be
doing?

I don't see any advice in any of the official ZFS guides.

What steps are _you_ taking to protect _your_ pools? How are you protecting
your enterprise data? How often are you losing an entire pool and restoring
from backups?

I'm looking forward to your suggestions.

Thanks!