Have a few questions that could use some help answering

[TheUsD]

New to TrueNAS. Tried FreeNAS back in the day but my IT mind had not been developed for it at the time. Years later, now I can do something with technology...
I've read the Doc and specific topics of questions I have but couldn't find the full answer or quite understand what doc was trying to explain.

I'm very accustom to the Dell SCv's and their ways that I use on a daily basis for my 9-5 job. I have lets say 12, 10TB disks as shown in the picture attached. If I were to add a new disk, I could simply just do a "Rebalance RAID" and the SCv would reorganize the data / raid to spread the data equally out to all the disks.
1) When creating a pool, lets say I start with 4, 4TB disks, and then later want to add one disk here or there to the same pool and finish with 8 disks, could I accomplish this same task like the SCv? If not, what would be the best practice?

2) I have successfully joined the TrueNAS to LDAP and AD, however I cannot see my users listed anywhere in the GUI except when I run the shell command to list users. Is there a fix or work around for this?

3) Is there somewhere in the documentation that tells you the steps to make an AD user an admin for GUI? Does TrueNAS support SSO/SAML?

Running version: TrueNAS Core 12.0-U1.1
Thanks

 

[TheUsD]

 

[sretalla]

3) Is there somewhere in the documentation that tells you the steps to make an AD user an admin for GUI? Does TrueNAS support SSO/SAML?

Only the root account can access the TrueNAS GUI.

I'm very accustom to the Dell SCv's and their ways that I use on a daily basis for my 9-5 job. I have lets say 12, 10TB disks as shown in the picture attached. If I were to add a new disk, I could simply just do a "Rebalance RAID" and the SCv would reorganize the data / raid to spread the data equally out to all the disks.
1) When creating a pool, lets say I start with 4, 4TB disks, and then later want to add one disk here or there to the same pool and finish with 8 disks, could I accomplish this same task like the SCv? If not, what would be the best practice?

Best practice is to read the documentation/resources and understand ZFS. It doesn't work at all like a DELL RAID controller.

Here's a link (although the resources section at the top of the forum isn't hard to find, look at the fundamentals category): https://www.truenas.com/community/resources/introduction-to-zfs.111/

You should come away from your reading able to answer these questions with confidence:

What's a VDEV and what types of VDEV are there?

What's a Pool?

What's a Dataset?

What are the valid ways to expand a Pool?

 

[TheUsD]

I appreciate your answer to question three, and that's honestly a bit of a downer you can't have more than one admin. Also, isn't that a direct "no-no" stated by MITRE ATT&CK?? Anyone know if there is any development to improve this limitation?

I've read the Doc and specific topics of questions I have but couldn't find the full answer or quite understand what doc was trying to explain.

As I already stated, I read the doc To Be More Specific and could not find the answer to question two. I was looking for a more direct answer and not replies that come off condescending or smart-aleck of how easy it is to find a link above. Sometimes what's easy for you is not easy for others . A simple: "Hey you might want to look into going this route" or "This cannot be done" would be much more simple .

The old, 2012 doc you provided did answer some other questions I had (thanks for that link) but it seems the doc is old and antiquated in a few areas. Is there docs or guides similar to this one that wasn't written back in 2012 and verified in 2016?

 

[sretalla]

that's honestly a bit of a downer you can't have more than one admin. Also, isn't that a direct "no-no" stated by MITRE ATT&CK?? Anyone know if there is any development to improve this limitation?

It has been discussed many times in this forum and as I understand it each request to do so has been closed without success as the view is that all actions done in the GUI are essentially root equivalent. If you want to avoid root logins to your TrueNAS park, you can use TrueCommand and the RBAC stuff they have in there to manage it. If you're an enterprise customer, consider using the Enterprise version (requires the iX hardware), which comes with enterprise support.

I was looking for a more direct answer and not replies that come off condescending or smart-aleck of how easy it is to find a link above.

Some of us do a lot of answering of the same questions here which can be tiresome, particularly when the person answering appears not to want to read information that's already out there for them.

The words in my answer were genuine, not intended to be anything other than advice. Referring to me as condescending or a smart-alec isn't helpful.

Is there docs or guides similar to this one that wasn't written back in 2012 and verified in 2016?

The internet is full of information.

ZFS hasn't fundamentally changed since that time.

The key information you need is:

Forget everything you think you know about RAID based on DELL RAID controllers. That has little to do with ZFS RAIDZ and mirrors.

ZFS is a complete Filesystem and Volume Manager which uses direct access to disks to provide storage in a highly data-secure fashion.

VDEVs are the basic unit of storage which can either individually or in concert (always striped together) provide a pool which contains dataset filesystems or ZVOL block storage which can provide various different levels of performance or redundancy based on the setup.

Once a VDEV is created, you can't expand it or change its layout (EXCEPTION: single-disk VDEVS can become mirrors, Mirrors can become single-disk or change the number of mirrored disks). VDEV expansion is in the works, but even when it does arrive (maybe in a couple of years), I don't recommend using it as there's no automated levelling of the data.

VERY IMPORTANT:
Pool design is an essential foundation for everything you will do with ZFS. Get that right and you will have a happy life.

The path to success for block storage

It seems like I haven't written a sticky for awhile, but just in the last week I've had to cover this topic several times. ZFS does two different things very well. One is storage of large sequentially-written files, such as archives, logs, or data files, where the file does not have the middle...

www.truenas.com

Path to Success for Structuring Datasets in Your Pool

Path to Success for Structuring Datasets in Your Pool So you've got a shiny new FreeNAS server, just begging to have you create a pool and start loading it up. Assuming you've read @jgreco's The path to success for block storage sticky, you've decided on the composition of your pool (RAIDZx vs...

www.truenas.com

You may also find this one helpful: (the first google result from typing Understanding ZFS... there are many more useful results including videos)

ZFS 101—Understanding ZFS storage and performance

Learn to get the most out of your ZFS filesystem in our new series on storage fundamentals.

arstechnica.com

 

[LarsR]

As 12.0 is a relativ new release ( Nov/Dec 2020) the Documents are not yet up to date. The Documents team is in the middle of updating and reworking the Documents page.