Little bit behind the 8-ball on posting this, but I came across this post at AspiringSysadmin.com – ZFS boot without having to manually set it up like you currently have to do with OpenSolaris.
NexentaOS is a GNU operating system that uses apt on top of the OpenSolaris kernel and runtime. It looks to me as though the www.gnusolaris.org site has been abandoned for the GenUnix NextentaOS site, which is a shame because it’s damn hard to find on Google. The GenUnix site actually also hosts the Belenix and Schillix sites as well, with Belenix a LiveCD, and Schillix a rebuilt OpenSolaris distro.
The AspringSysadmin went into how to set NextentaOS in VMWare – my quest now is to combine VMWare, NextentaOS ZFS Boot and 2x750GB drives in RaidZ configuration… I hope it works!