Docker Storage Question

[WrlsFanatic]

I'm new to FreeNAS, but I decided to start with Corral since I can handle a little bugginess and would rather not learn the old knowing I'll soon be transitioning to the new. I bought two SSDs to use as my boot drives, but I keep seeing suggestion after suggestion that I should just go with USB flash drives. I already had the two SSDs (Samsung 840 EVOs), so I didn't see a good reason to use them as anything but the boot drive.

As I start to install and learn what I didn't know I needed to learn, it appears that my Plex Docker will need to be installed on an available datastore, which is currently only my WD Red z1 array. So I have two questions:
1) Am I correct about that? Do I have to have a non-FreeNAS-OS volume to put the Plex Docker OS?
2) If not, how can I place the Docker OS files on my mirrored boot drive (SSDs)?

If I can't run the Docker OS from the FreeNAS OS volume, then I'll just grab two USB drives from the store and run them as my mirrored boot drives. If I can, then I won't lose the work I've done so far in setting up my FreeNAS server. Thanks for any help!!

 

[joeschmuck]

Let me shine some light on you...

The developers typically use a SSD as a boot device. Some people are still recommending USB Flash drives but if you have an available SATA port, go with a single small SSD. Keep a backup of your configuration file should something go bad and you need to re-install FreeNAS.

You cannot place any files on your boot drives.
Your docker containers and all the software/data is stored on your pool, you do not need seperate drives for this.

 

[WrlsFanatic]

So you would suggest I leave the docker files on the main WD Red/z1 pool? I'm obviously putting all of the media in that pool, I just thought the mirrored SSDs would make Plex run faster.

THANK YOU, sincerely, for your help.

 

[joeschmuck]

Yes, leave all your data on the pool. Plex runs in RAM and so long as you have enough RAM in your system, all should be fine. You run into problems when the SWAP space needs to be used. The goal is to never use SWAP space so ensure you have at least 8GB RAM, but if you plan to run Plex and several other applications, grab another 8GB RAM and install it if you can.

 

[WrlsFanatic]

Yeah, I'm good there. 16GB of ECC RAM. But again, that's why I worried about the docker performance. I assumed it wasn't all in memory.