Boot Pool Usage

[Yong Jin]

I've been searching this in many places but seems I cannot get any direct and straight forward answers.

All my FreeNAS boxes are install on a small mini thumbdrive of 8 GB or 16 GB, however these days small size thumbdrives are hard to come by.

Can anyone tell me what is the actual usage for the boot pool apart from just the FreeNAS and logs?

I'm contemplating on using a larger boot drive but I cannot seems to find any reason or function that actually use the space.

Anyone can give me straight to the point answer on what exactly the boot pool is used apart from logs and what else it can be use since it cannot be use for data storage.

Thanks.

Regards,

Yong Jin

 

[sretalla]

I'm contemplating on using a larger boot drive but I cannot seems to find any reason or function that actually use the space.

Using a larger stick gives the system a chance to work on reallocating bad blocks and will result in a longer-living stick.

32GB is some kind of sweet-spot, but there's nothing wrong with going bigger if it's no additional cost or the only available option.

 

[Yong Jin]

Understand the bad block part but as time goes by lower capacity will be obsolete and is not cost effective therefore I'm looking at various options to maximized the boot pool. In fact I'm looking at SSD as a 128 SSD cost roughly the same as a 64 GB thumbdrive in my area.

Thanks.

Regards,

Yong Jin

 

[pschatz100]

You cannot use the boot device for anything else, unless you jump through hoops and make a custom configuration - which will always be a headache to maintain. At the end of the day, the extra capacity of a 128GB SSD will assist with wear leveling and extend the life of the SSD.

Storage is cheap enough that I don't worry about "wasting space", and I'm happy to use capacity to increase device life and performance.