Install truenas in mirrored pool with M.2 + SATA?

ragametal

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May 4, 2021
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I’m about to buy an HP ML30 Gen10 server that has an M.2 slot which I want to use for the installation instance of truenas.

The server also has a spare SATA port which has made me think about creating a mirrored boot pool to install truenas.

What would be the best way of achieving this intent with different hard drive interfaces (M.2 and SATA)?. The way i see it i have 2 options:
  1. Buy two M.2 hard drives and a M.2 to 2.5 SATA adapter for the SATA port. This would allow me to use identical hard drives which, per my understanding, is what it's recommended in mirrored applications.
  2. Buy an M.2 hard drive and a 2.5 SSD hard drive. Both hard drives should have the same capacity and ideally made by the same manufacturer. This is a simpler option with fewer points of failure since it doesn’t introduce any adapters to the equation but I wouldn’t have identical hard drives. Are there any real disadvantages to this option?
Thanks for your opinions on this.
 

Ericloewe

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Realistically, it doesn't matter in the slightest for the boot pool. Even for non-boot pools, there's a lot of leeway.

If you want to satisfy your OCD, you can get the same SATA SSD in M.2 and 2.5" form factor. Most 2.5" SATA SSDs are large empty shells around a tiny PCB anyway.
 

ragametal

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Realistically, it doesn't matter in the slightest for the boot pool. Even for non-boot pools, there's a lot of leeway.

If you want to satisfy your OCD, you can get the same SATA SSD in M.2 and 2.5" form factor. Most 2.5" SATA SSDs are large empty shells around a tiny PCB anyway.

And that is exactly what i wanted to know. Personally, i don't like to add more complexity to a system if i don't have to. So, a regular SATA ssd and a M.2 SSD it will be then.

Thank you so much for your response.
 

ThreeDee

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Jun 13, 2013
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I only run one boot drive, but I went from a 128gb SSD connected via USB to SATA cable to a 128GB M.2 NVMe SSD .. I mirrored the M.2 and then removed the SATA SSD from the configuration without a hitch
 

ragametal

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I only run one boot drive, but I went from a 128gb SSD connected via USB to SATA cable to a 128GB M.2 NVMe SSD .. I mirrored the M.2 and then removed the SATA SSD from the configuration without a hitch
Besides making your setup simpler, Is there any particular reason you didn't keep the mirrored setup?
 

ThreeDee

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I've never ran mirrored boot devices .. I just backup my config file from time to time in case I have to reinstall for whatever reasons. I'm just a home lab setup so nothing mission critical to begin with. My motherboard has 2 M.2 slots so it would be easy enough to setup using same type of drives .. but I use the second M.2 slot for a 'jail' drive ..

If I where running this for a business or the like .. then I'd go mirrored boot drives .. and redundancy of some kind for my drives too, of which I'm not doing there either right now.
 

ragametal

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I've never ran mirrored boot devices .. I just backup my config file from time to time in case I have to reinstall for whatever reasons. I'm just a home lab setup so nothing mission critical to begin with. My motherboard has 2 M.2 slots so it would be easy enough to setup using same type of drives .. but I use the second M.2 slot for a 'jail' drive ..

If I where running this for a business or the like .. then I'd go mirrored boot drives .. and redundancy of some kind for my drives too, of which I'm not doing there either right now.
Your setup makes a lot of sense to me. I would not use a mirrored boot pool for a lab either but my setup will be for my small business which, for me, will be mission critical as that is my only source of income.
 

ornias

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Mar 6, 2020
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but I use the second M.2 slot for a 'jail' drive ..
You would be beter off with using both m.2 drives as a mirrored metadata drive and setting small-blocks to 128 for the jail-datasets (which puts all jail data into the metadata ssds). That would get you more performance around the board.

(and use a single or double sata ssd as boot drive as you please)
 
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