Read the article to know more about the “ZPool create failed” issue. At Bobcares, with our Proxmox Support, we can handle your Proxmox issues.

ZPool Creation Failed In Proxmox

When attempting to build a ZFS pool in Proxmox VE (PVE) or other platforms, we receive the following problem:

ZPool Creation Failed In Proxmox: Fix

This error usually appears when we try to build a ZFS pool with disks that have existing partition tables or disks of varying sizes. For example, one of the drives may be in ext4 format, NTFS, or have any other partition tables. Or, suppose one drive is 1TB and another is 500G, and we wish to establish a ZFS mirror or RAIDz array.

It is not recommended to build a ZFS pool with disks of varying sizes or to have existing partitions/files, etc. We must use the same size disks and to pre-wipe them. However, if we need to construct a ZFS pool with disks that already have partitions and are of varying sizes, we can do it. In this scenario, we can compel it to construct the ZFS pool by using the -f option.

For Proxmox VE (PVE), we can copy the command to SSH, then add the -f option, or if we are on another platform/system, we can just manually type the command with the -f option. Inputting the incorrect disk into the command will result in permanent data loss. So, we must be extremely cautious.

Example: Replace /sbin/zpool create -o 'ashift=12' mirror /dev/disk/by-id/xxxxxx /dev/disk/by-id/yyyyyy with /sbin/zpool create -f -o 'ashift=12' mirror /dev/disk/by-id/xxxxxx /dev/disk/by-id/yyyyyy

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Conclusion

In this article, we’ve seen the simple precautions from our Tech team we should take before creating the ZPool in Proxmox in order to avoid the “ZPool create failed” issue.