kvm virtualization - Is it safe to boot a linux server from a USB drive?

I have an HP DL360 G7 server I plan to install KVM and ZFS on. The purpose is going to be a lab in a box. I have the 8 drive bays in the front loaded with 4 drives and an SSD (for the ZFS ZIL cache). My goal was to keep the disk array away from the actual OS disk. What I am wonder is weather or not it is safe to boot a Linux server installation from a USB drive for "production" use. The server has an embedded USB / SD card reader on the motherboard for VMware and other embedded solutions. This raises a question to me because once VMware is loaded it stay in memory. On the other hand a Linux install does not (atleast not 100%). I am concerned if I load the OS on a USB drive (or SD card) I will burn the SD card out.

Can anyone please give me some insight on this? I am wondering what my options are. The way I see it my options currently are make Linux boot from the ZFS array or use a USB drive. The first option would be okay if I could make grub play nice with ZFS root booting. Which to my knowledge is broken or at least needs some nasty hack to pull it off.

Like I said any help you could provide would be great.

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