Can I use my SSDs for more than just boot drives?

[BetYourBottom]

I recently picked up two Intel 710 100GB SSDs and was planning on using them for boot drives. I'm now wondering if that's very efficient; I don't think I need the full 100GB of space for just booting off of.

So now I'm thinking, "Can I use these SSDs for more than just boot drives?" Can I partition them up so that I have 32GB for booting, put some towards a SLOG or L2ARC, and any leftover could be removed with Over-provisioning to keep them alive as long as possible?

Here's my current Hardware:

• Dell C2100
• 2x Intel E5640
• 74GB ECC DDR3 RAM
• 6x WD Red 4TB in RaidZ2
• 2x USB Flash drives for booting that I want to remove

I'm primarily using it as a File/Media server with Samba and Emby. I have to doing some other tasks as well such as running a small Minecraft server for my friends and any other things I can think to throw at it. Nothing intense like trying to run a bunch of VMs off it via iSCSI.

EDIT: If it wasn't clear, I'm planning on mirroring the SSDs.

 

[JohnDigital]

No IMO 100gb intel drives are overkill for boot drives. You would be better utilizing those SSDs to house your jails and or plugins. Use a handful of USB drives to boot from (you can fill every USB port with them), or tiny SSDs (like 16gb ones). The only thing SSDs provide for you as boot devices is longevity and reliability, with a bump to update time/boot time. Once your machine is booted up, those SSDs are sitting idle. I like the 16gb U100 sandisk SSDs for boot devices myself. You can nab them on ebay quite frequently, very cheap. I looked just now and there arent too many. The main drawback is then only the loss of 2 SATA ports.

But hey if you got the Intels sitting around doing nothing, they will work great, but it isnt advisable to partition them cleverly and use them. I doubt you need any sort of SLOG or L2ARC.

Im curious why you want to switch from USB drives? You will see no difference other than boot/update time, and even that isnt especially noticeable.

 

[Chris Moore]

I don't think I need the full 100GB of space for just booting off of.

So now I'm thinking, "Can I use these SSDs for more than just boot drives?"

Not really. You could put the system dataset on the boot pool, but that is about it.

The only thing SSDs provide for you as boot devices is longevity and reliability, with a bump to update time/boot time. Once your machine is booted up, those SSDs are sitting idle.

They are not entirely idle. FreeNAS used to be entirely memory resident but it now uses the boot pool interactively depending on what it is doing just like any other operating system.
Also, if you put your system dataset on the boot pool, that activity is off you data drives. USB sticks will not hold up to that amount of read/write activity but a SSD should handle it with no trouble.

EDIT: If it wasn't clear, I'm planning on mirroring the SSDs.

Not much point in that. The Intel SSDs are reliable enough that you will probably be able to use one for a decade and never have a fault.

But hey if you got the Intels sitting around doing nothing, they will work great, but it isnt advisable to partition them cleverly and use them. I doubt you need any sort of SLOG or L2ARC.

According to the specs on that model drive, it is only 3Gb/s SATA which is really very slow (for an SSD) and even 6Gb/s SATA SSDs are too slow to work well for SLOG or L2ARC anyhow.

 

[JohnDigital]

They are not entirely idle. FreeNAS used to be entirely memory resident but it now uses the boot pool interactively depending on what it is doing just like any other operating system.
Also, if you put your system dataset on the boot pool, that activity is off you data drives. USB sticks will not hold up to that amount of read/write activity but a SSD should handle it with no trouble.

Good to know!

 

[BetYourBottom]

Use a handful of USB drives to boot from (you can fill every USB port with them), or tiny SSDs (like 16gb ones).

I like the 16gb U100 sandisk SSDs for boot devices myself. You can nab them on ebay quite frequently, very cheap. I looked just now and there arent too many. The main drawback is then only the loss of 2 SATA ports.

Im curious why you want to switch from USB drives?

There are only 2 USB ports and I'd like to be able to use them for other things at times, like possibly a UPS.

I managed to get the 2 drives for $30, so they weren't much more than the drives you showed me but they are much higher quality except for the slower sequential speeds.

EDIT: Also I'm unsure of how I could move my Jails and Plugins to the new SSDs. I'd consider if I could find a tutorial for something like that though.

You could put the system dataset on the boot pool, but that is about it.

Then I might consider moving that at least.

Not much point in that. The Intel SSDs are reliable enough that you will probably be able to use one for a decade and never have a fault.

According to the specs on that model drive, it is only 3Gb/s SATA which is really very slow (for an SSD) and even 6Gb/s SATA SSDs are too slow to work well for SLOG or L2ARC anyhow.

I'm actually a little tempted now to just use one of the drives to boot and the other would go in an external case so that I could have a really fast and decent sized flash drive.

 

[pschatz100]

I would set one up as a boot drive and another for jails. No need to mirror SSD's when using them for boot drives. For the applications you mentioned, you won't see much performance difference between jails on the SSD and jails on your disk array but I like keeping my data and OS/system files separated.

For your application, a SLOG or L2ARC won't help - I wouldn't bother with them.

 

[cobrakiller58]

I have my 32gig boot SSD's mirrored and I also moved my system dataset to them, I'm sure they will out last everything else in the chassis......

 

[BetYourBottom]

I would set one up as a boot drive and another for jails. No need to mirror SSD's when using them for boot drives. For the applications you mentioned, you won't see much performance difference between jails on the SSD and jails on your disk array but I like keeping my data and OS/system files separated.

For your application, a SLOG or L2ARC won't help - I wouldn't bother with them.

How would I go about moving my Jails dataset over to the new SSD?

 

[Mirfster]

I personally would just leave the mirrored SSDs as the boot device and consider it a solid investment. Unless, you want to replace them with smaller SSDs.

Since I don't use jails, I can't really help too much on that part.

BTW, this thread caught my attention since you are using a C2100... How are things working out for you in regards to that system?

 

[BetYourBottom]

I personally would just leave the mirrored SSDs as the boot device and consider it a solid investment. Unless, you want to replace them with smaller SSDs.

Since I don't use jails, I can't really help too much on that part.

BTW, this thread caught my attention since you are using a C2100... How are things working out for you in regards to that system?

Things are going great. I actually bought my C2100 after seeing your Ode thread and deciding it'd be a pretty good choice. Though I did have some weird issues on my way to getting my system working but I managed to overcome them.

First I couldn't get it to POST with my RAM and my E5640s but it would POST just fine with the E5504(?) that came with it. Also it'd POST just fine with the E5640s and some desktop RAM. I went and bought some new sticks of ECC RAM from a store in town and it'd work fine with them as well. Then I just mixed the RAM I got on Ebay with the RAM from the store and it'd boot no issue. I think there was some strange issue with DDR3L that caused it not to want to work at the low voltage with the E5640s and the store bought RAM was plain DDR3; the plain DDR3 forced the DDR3L to run at the fallback higher voltage and suddenly everything worked.

Then when I got my disks in, I started having tons of IO errors that I couldn't find the source of. For context, I have the 3xSFF-8484 backplane model and I bought the H200 mezzanine card to go with it. Tried insane numbers of things, different combinations of connecting drives and rearranging cables, bought another HBA to test, reflashed the H200 a dozen times thinking it was a bad flash of the HBA firmware. Well the funny thing is, is that I noticed whenever connected to the MB through the backplane it would work fine but no HBA would work. Turns out the SATA ports on the motherboard are SATA2, so they ran at a lower speed than the default SAS1/SATA3 HBAs; I grabbed a jumper off of an old IDE drive I had around and put it on one of my new drives to put it into SATA2 compatibility mode and it started working fine. My guess is that even though the backplane is 1:1 it still has some sort of speed limitation for some reason and only works at SATA2 speeds, which is just fine for a mechanical array. I ran out bought some jumpers and haven't had any issues since then.

 

[Mirfster]

Gotcha, yeah at times it can be a finicky one. But, if done right it'll purr like a kitten... ;)

As far as RAM, there are specific slots that need to be populated in order to get things running as desired. Usually for that I have a printed copy of the that page from the manual (page 73 or 74?). Also, I mainly really only use the Samsung low voltage memory @ 1.35V (example: https://www.ebay.com/itm/SAMSUNG-CI...068119?hash=item2f18795697:g:8IQAAOSwBiBavB~U) and avoid mixing RAM.

Sorry you ended up getting a system that has the SFF-8484 Backplane, IMHO that is way inferior to the preferred 9NXC7 model. Don't really recall, but I thought that I did make some recommendation about being careful of not getting a system with the older SFF-8484 backplane. Guess I will double check and update if I didn't.

Maybe you can get the Seller to send you a replacement? If not, there is always the option of shelling out ~$80.00...

Hope things work out for you.

 

[BetYourBottom]

I swear I checked the manual and did everything according to the instructions, so I think the issue is just a weird one due to the low voltage. I'd avoid missing RAM if I could but I don't know another way to make this work, besides I really doubt there is going to be an issue mixing 2 different sticks of RAM when they are both DDR3 ECC Registered and such.

I don't really mind the backplane, there isn't really anything wrong with it and it's not going to be much slower than one of the expander backplanes depending on the model. Spending an extra $80 to get virtually no benefit doesn't sound very interesting.

Also it's been in my house running for over a year now since I got it up and running with no issues. So I think I'm well past those problems.

 

[Mirfster]

Also it's been in my house running for over a year now since I got it up and running with no issues. So I think I'm well past those problems.

Sounds like you're happy, so I'm happy for you. :)