Mirror boot device

[avalon60]

First of all, I have searched for the answer I want but non of the links gave me it. Plenty on how to mirror, but that is not what I want ask.

I have 1 intel Series3 40Gb ssd drive which freeNAS boots from. I also have another of the same ssd drive, same size and same model number etc.
Does FreeNAS have to be installed on the 2nd drive which I want to be a mirrored drive, or can it be an empty drive. Choose wether it is empty of has FreeNAS on, it is not seen in the BIOS when the original ssd is connected and boots up into FreeNAS. Also neither is it seen in the boot tab of the GUI.

But if I install FreeNAS on this 2nd drive and if it is connected to the P0 (in the BIOS) sata port on the board it boots up fine.
Also, it seems that whichever of the 2 sata ssd sata port it is connected to, it is still P0 in the BIOS, and when both drives are connected, only the 1 drive on P0 is seen
When I go to Hard Drive BBS page both drives are shown, P0 and P1

Any ideas please

 

[sretalla]

The best way to mirror boot drives is at install time.

With both drives connected, run the install and select both disks, then install (and restore the config you saved if you had one worth saving).

I don't know about your BIOS boot settings, but often BIOS won't differentiate clearly between devices of the same type in the boot options selection (like HDD, USB, CD...).

If you install as mirrored, it doesn't matter which one the BIOS uses unless one of them dies, in which case there's only one to select anyway.

 

[avalon60]

To do what you suggest is to remove the original drive, err backup first, then do a fresh install of FreeNAS, and then boot up with either.

After doing the above and then booting FreeNAS and uploading the latest backup, FreeNAS has now booted up ok, but the 2nd ssd drive is not showing in the Boot GUI

Thanks

 

[sretalla]

I wouldn't be worried about not seeing it in the boot options... it's only needed when the first one is dead.

Can you see the details showing both disks in FreeNAS after booting (zpool status) ?

 

[avalon60]

In boot status it shows FreeNAS boot, Stripe, then ada1p2 in the legacy GUI

When I used x2 16gb usb sticks, both was showing up in the boot GUI page, but not the 2 ssd drives.???

I found the Pools in the new FreeNAS GUI, and when I selected Storage, there is ada0 unused, and ada1, which is the boot pool

Update:
In the legacy Boot GUI, when I go to Status, then Stripe, I get a button at the bottom left of the page saying Attach. When I click Attache I get a box up with ada0 in a small dropdown box window, and if I then click Attach Disk, I get an error message saying:
Select a valid choice. ada0 is not one of the available choices.

If ada1 is the boot drive, then ada0 is meant to be the mirrored drive, but I can't use it to attach the boot files etc

 

[avalon60]

Anybody please have any solution to this problem.

 

[sretalla]

OK, in order to help, I need to see the output of zpool status from the command line of your server (use code tags to make sure the formating is OK).

 

[avalon60]

I've got a list of the zpool status in a terminal or shell, is this how you mean. The 2 ssd drives are at the bottom of the listing.

thanks

config: NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM Backup_Data ONLINE 0 0 0 mirror-0 ONLINE 0 0 0 gptid/ce563f3f-528e-11e6-9216-0cc47a0c1eef ONLINE 0 0 0 gptid/cf115aaa-528e-11e6-9216-0cc47a0c1eef ONLINE 0 0 0 errors: No known data errors pool: CCTV state: ONLINE scan: scrub repaired 0 in 0 days 00:06:25 with 0 errors on Sun May 12 00:06:26 2019 config: NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM CCTV ONLINE 0 0 0 gptid/d647d843-4792-11e6-a4b6-0cc47a0c1eef ONLINE 0 0 0 errors: No known data errors pool: WinShare state: ONLINE scan: scrub repaired 0 in 0 days 00:38:14 with 0 errors on Sun May 12 00:38:14 2019 config: NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM WinShare ONLINE 0 0 0 raidz1-0 ONLINE 0 0 0 gptid/434ebf5b-4792-11e6-a4b6-0cc47a0c1eef ONLINE 0 0 0 gptid/441279f9-4792-11e6-a4b6-0cc47a0c1eef ONLINE 0 0 0 gptid/44db1bfb-4792-11e6-a4b6-0cc47a0c1eef ONLINE 0 0 0 gptid/459c45ee-4792-11e6-a4b6-0cc47a0c1eef ONLINE 0 0 0 gptid/464e7612-4792-11e6-a4b6-0cc47a0c1eef ONLINE 0 0 0 errors: No known data errors pool: freenas-boot state: ONLINE scan: resilvered 765M in 0 days 00:00:19 with 0 errors on Wed May 29 19:04:24 2019 config: NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM freenas-boot ONLINE 0 0 0 mirror-0 ONLINE 0 0 0 ada1p2 ONLINE 0 0 0 ada0p2 ONLINE 0 0 0 errors: No known data errors [root@freenas ~]#

 

[sretalla]

That's good enough. I can see that your boot pool is properly mirrored.

 

[avalon60]

Thank you for confirming that, as to me it didn't look like they were mirrored with both drives not showing up in the legacy boot page.
Now tho' in Boot Status is does show as mirrored. MAybe it took sometime to do the mirror operation when it didn't show that before.

Thanks again