mirrored install truenas scale

[Kieros]

Hi,

I am pretty new to this whole truenas thing.
I have 2 ideas about installing truenas scale but I would like to know what would be the best choice. I have no option of buying new storage at the moment.

Idea 1
I have been looking on how to install truenas scale on 2x equaly samsung 1TB drives that I have laying arround.

I have these 2x Samsung 980 PRO 1TB M.2 SSD
One will work with 4.0 and one will work with 3.0 not realy sure about the 3.0 part but both will be placed in a nmve slot.

I would like to partition the 2 drives with equal size for a mirrored boot of truenas but also the remaining storage to be part of a pool.

Is this possible?

Idea 2
I also have a 120 GB ssd. To install truenas scale on. Can I partion one of the nmve drives to 120GB to be the mirror?

Idea 3
Is there a better idea to do this. Buying new storage is no option.



I also have a qnap running at the moment. with 2x 2TB drives WD red mirrored.
The Qnap is kinda old already so it will be replaced with the truenas.
One of the drives in the qnap is having bad sectors. So I wish to transfer everything to the new truenas with the 6 TB seagate drive ironwolf that I bought.
Create a pool with that 6TB drive and later add the 2 drives again and create a raid z. Is this possible?

I read that the ZFS can work arround bad sectors. While the qnap is alarming and makes me nervous. It is al still working and fine the other drive has no issues at all.
There are not many bad sectors on the 2TB drive so I thought to reuse it in a pool.
So the 6TB and 2x 2TB together in a pool with the remaining storage from the nvme samsung drives.

I also can use this 120 GB ssd drive that could be used as a L2ARC device. Not sure about that. There is so much to read :)

Please advise me on what to do.

Is the mirrored install of truenas necessary?
Is truenas scale the better option instead of core?

 

[sretalla]

I would like to partition the 2 drives with equal size for a mirrored boot of truenas but also the remaining storage to be part of a pool.

Is this possible?

What you want is unsupported, but can be done.

On Core like this

HOWTO: setup a pair of larger SSDs for boot pool and data

Moderator Warning: This HOWTO will damage the ability of your TrueNAS appliance to properly maintain itself, will break the ability to replace failed drives, and may cause problems with upgrades and updates. TrueNAS is not designed to do this sort of partitioning, and the developers are not...

www.truenas.com

and on SCALE like this

HOWTO: Using a pair of large SSDs with boot and data pools for SCALE

Moderator Warning: This HOWTO will damage the ability of your TrueNAS appliance to properly maintain itself, will break the ability to replace failed drives, and may cause problems with upgrades and updates. TrueNAS is not designed to do this sort of partitioning, and the developers are not...

www.truenas.com

 

[sretalla]

One of the drives in the qnap is having bad sectors. So I wish to transfer everything to the new truenas with the 6 TB seagate drive ironwolf that I bought.
Create a pool with that 6TB drive and later add the 2 drives again and create a raid z. Is this possible?

I wouldn't be planning to bring a drive already in trouble into a ZFS pool.

In any case, drives of different sizes aren't going to mix to give you anything useful, particularly if you're cutting off the branch you're sitting on in the 6TB during transition.

I also can use this 120 GB ssd drive that could be used as a L2ARC device.

Don't. You haven't specified how much RAM you have, but I bet it isn't 64GB or more, so forget L2ARC for now.

 

[Kieros]

I have 32GB of RAM is L2ARC not usefull then?
I would like to run vms or containers. Then truenas scale is the way to go right? I want plex to run on it on a vm or container. So 6 TB it is? Can I make a Raid z of this later on? If I buy new 6 TB drives? I think the drive aint that bad yet but otherwise I can put the 6TB and the good one 2TB in a pool and add 6 TB later on or just keep backups now and then. I do not have much data change over time. Most important is new family photos or video's. Which are uploaded once a year from mobile and such. All others is less important

 

[sretalla]

I would like to run vms or containers. Then truenas scale is the way to go right?

Jails are containers (actually the grandfather of linux containers in a way), so both CORE and SCALE match the brief. If you're specifically interested in Docker (actually kubernetes, since the container engine may be changed later), then SCALE is it.

So 6 TB it is? Can I make a Raid z of this later on?

A single-disk VDEV/Pool (stripe) can change to be a mirror (and back to stripe again if necessary), but not to RAIDZ... the only way forward with RAIDZ is to create a pool, so it would be destroy and recreate as the way forward if you want to land on RAIDZ of some kind, otherwise, mirrors.

I think the drive aint that bad yet

You mentioned it has bad sectors/errors? With ZFS (where data integrity is a primary objective), bad sectors are a warning sign that your disk is on the way to failure and hence not a good pillar on which to build your pool.

I have 32GB of RAM is L2ARC not usefull then?

Probably not. You can always add that later (and remove it easily if it's not helping), but arc_summary will tell you how well your RAM (ARC) is doing so you can see if L2ARC might help once you're running.

 

[Kieros]

Thank you very much for this information I will read through the post you mentioned for the scale version.