How to Mirror a USB boot drive?

[jgdempsey]

I just upgraded my FreeNAS box from 9.10 to 11.2-RC1, and replaced the existing USB sticks I was using for boot drives since they were degraded. I've searched through the forum and the Manual and I haven't found a way to Mirror the boot drive.

I can see both da0 and da1 in the Disks view under storage (and shows da0 in the Boot Pool):

but if I look under Pools, only the Main Pool is shown:

Under Boot Environments, the only option I see is clone. Am I missing something?

Thanks in advance..

 

[DrKK]

So, I'm still on 9.10.

But in 9.10, what you do, is you go system->boot->status, and then you'd have the ability to "attach" another device, which would then mirror it to the existing boot device.

This may be helpful?

 

[garm]

in 11.2-RC1 its General > Boot Environment > Boot pool status > Freenas-boot > attach

 

[jgdempsey]

Thanks Garm, That got da1 into the Boot Pool, but there is no indication that it is mirrored:

 

[danb35]

there is no indication that it is mirrored

The disks page doesn't give you any indication of pool configuration. What does the boot pool status page show?

 

[jgdempsey]

Actually, it looks like it's there now.. I didn't realize where to look. Thanks Everyone!

 

[northernsky]

Tip: If your copying data into your nas you might want to wait until its done. I just hosed my 3tb copy job after I hit attach for my second boot device. I should have been more patient since it was at 98%.

 

[johns007]

Hi, just wanted to add a question to this:

When i have attached a new boot volume to 'mirror' the existing operational version, is it possible to remove it from the system?

What i want to achieve is to create an 'exact copy' backup of the OS Boot Pool, if the SSD dies at some stage, i can simply just swap it out. Obviously, this would need to be 'silvered' again each and every time any configuration changes are made to the Boot Pool OS.