Boot Pool issues. Need help

Ianm_ozzy

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Mar 2, 2020
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Hi all.
I have a pool with VMs - a single 240GB SSD.
I have another as so it is mirrored and everything has redundancy.

That means no more sata ports available.
I have an old sata card - a 32 bit silicon image for extra (slow) ports but it would freeze the system so useless.

My other ports are nearly full with network cards and the last free one I am looking to use an NVMe adapter for a drive as L2 arc at some point. I am keeping that one free for now.

It is a micro ATX machine.
Due to physical constraints I can only use a micro ATX for my NAS. This means limited erxpansion and sata ports. Even when I upgrade to another cpu/motherboard/memory setup it will still likely be the case.

The boot pool is 2 x16GB usb drives. I have had no issues with them.
I know sata SSDs are recommended but not an option.

The most expedient & inexpensive way to ensure data integrity is to buy 1 or 2 more USB drives, to add to the boot pool.

How exactly is this done? I cannot find the option.
I was looking to add another to the boot pool and the fourth as a spare.

Just to reiterate - using sata as boot drives is not practical and likely will never will be.

I intend to upgrade t truenas at some point but need to get this sorted out first.

Useful info is appreciated.
 

sretalla

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way to ensure data integrity
Your pool data isn't at risk if the boot pool dies, just make a config backup every time you change something in your config.

Just to reiterate - using sata as boot drives is not practical and likely will never will be.
SATA to USB adapters make the use of SSDs for boot via USB a good option. A single SSD is probably sufficient.
 

Ianm_ozzy

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Mar 2, 2020
Messages
43
Your pool data isn't at risk if the boot pool dies, just make a config backup every time you change something in your config.


SATA to USB adapters make the use of SSDs for boot via USB a good option. A single SSD is probably sufficient.

I looked into that. Due to the situation with the ;rona' it is not so practical to get them right now.
Thanks for replies though.
 

sretalla

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What I found (several years ago) when I ran with 4 boot sticks was that failure was very difficult to handle since the USB sticks aren't clearly identified in a way that lets you find the dead one when it comes time to replace one.

I hope it goes well for you.

System | Boot | Actions | Boot Pool Status | (three dots on the right) | Attach (that's for TrueNAS 12 CORE... should be similar for 11.3... https://www.ixsystems.com/documentation/freenas/11.3-U5/system.html#os-device-mirroring)
 
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