What is the preferred way of doing this from a bare metal install?
As far as I know disks used in ZFS pools require EFI labels.
@fpmurphy: That's the opposite. Root pool disks (still) require a non EFI label, i.e. a VTOC/SMI label.
@LittleLebowsky: Use "format -e" to be able to choose the type of label to write.
for root pool, use SMI label using format -e .
you can create the pool right away using a EFI labelled disk