New Truenas install

[dontknowwhatimdoing]

hello. I picked up a dell r720xd to run truenas on. I put two sata SSDs in the rear backplane for installing the OS and wanted to have those setup as mirrored OS drives in case one fails. I saw in the install I could install the OS to both drives, but wanted to make sure I was doing this right. is installing to both drives going to create a software raid 1 (software mirror) of the OS drive, or is there more I have to do to make sure that changes I make while booted into one will be reflected on the other one?

 

[Samuel Tai]

You only need to install to 1 drive. You can create the boot-pool mirror after installation.

 

[dontknowwhatimdoing]

You only need to install to 1 drive. You can create the boot-pool mirror after installation.

so, I have not changed anything yet, but I chose to install to both drives. can I still create the boot pool mirror or should I reinstall and only select one drive this time? also, when I create this mirror, if one fails while the server is up does that take down the server or can the mirror be switched to live?

 

[Samuel Tai]

so, I have not changed anything yet, but I chose to install to both drives. can I still create the boot pool mirror or should I reinstall and only select one drive this time? also, when I create this mirror, if one fails while the server is up does that take down the server or can the mirror be switched to live?

You can still create the boot-pool mirror after installation. The OS will reformat and copy over the EFI and OS partitions to the 2nd drive, so you've only wasted labor.

Assuming you then create a data pool, this automatically moves the system dataset (which contains the config DB and the system logs) off the boot pool and onto the data pool. At that point, you can lose a member of the boot pool, and things will continue to run off the remaining member of the mirror.

 

[dontknowwhatimdoing]

You can still create the boot-pool mirror after installation. The OS will reformat and copy over the EFI and OS partitions to the 2nd drive, so you've only wasted labor.

Assuming you then create a data pool, this automatically moves the system dataset (which contains the config DB and the system logs) off the boot pool and onto the data pool. At that point, you can lose a member of the boot pool, and things will continue to run off the remaining member of the mirror.

awesome. thank you so much for your help

 

[dontknowwhatimdoing]

so, to make sure, this is how the setup should look if I want mirrors on the two boot drives

 

[Samuel Tai]

Yes, you've got it. Don't forget to add the 2nd drive to the BIOS boot order.

 

[dontknowwhatimdoing]

Yes, you've got it. Don't forget to add the 2nd drive to the BIOS boot order.

yeah I need to go fix my boot order generally. right now it takes forever looking for boot on IPv4 before it considers any drives and then goes through every drive in the system. plan on setting it to USB first, those two drives second then fail.