Switch to SSD

[webdawg]

I used to get railed on these forums talking about using real boot devices.

Why when TrueNAS came into the picture did the requirement change:

 

[Kris Moore]

We've been trying to encourage folks to use real boot media for a while now, even before TrueNAS 12. USB media is just too sporadic to recommend across the board, and there are issues with some chipsets where it just doesn't play nice with FreeBSD well enough. Obviously folks can use what they want, but our recommendations need to be for the things that will work the *most* reliably all the time.

 

[webdawg]

Well then I guess the real question I am asking is that, is TrueNAS targeted now, and in the future to be booted from USB?

I remember all the logging was done on the ZFS pool you add, and not rootfs....

Is the rootfs pool still meant to be read only?

Since you removed the USB requirement, don't you predict a shift in what the rootfs pool will be used for?

 

[jgreco]

Well then I guess the real question I am asking is that, is TrueNAS targeted now, and in the future to be booted from USB?

We haven't recommended USB for well over half a decade, since before you signed up for these forums.

Nothing in what you quoted makes USB look like a desirable option, either, so where exactly are you getting that from?

 

[HoneyBadger]

I believe it was version 9.3 when the boot pool became ZFS which exacerbated the issues with lower-quality USB sticks. With that said I've used (decent quality) USB sticks to boot from on low-traffic "family backup" systems.

The installer still says "flash media" because it's important to differentiate between "USB the protocol/method of attaching drive" and "USB the cheap flash drive for $2.99 at the corner store" - a used Intel SSD (or even an HDD) attached via a USB to SATA converter is a fine option, provided you can secure it properly.

The cheap thumbdrive on the other hand may fail after a short period of time and cause you to wonder why you're getting middleware errors or a non-responsive system, and ultimately iX doesn't want to have systems in the wild that are giving a bad impression of software based on hardware that's misbehaving.

 

[webdawg]

Well then that all makes sense then @jgreco and @HoneyBadger

I was more concerned, and I suppose it is my ignorance here, that a move to SSD meant that more and more will be written to rootfs, and remove the capability for USB all together.

That being said, USB to SATA seems like a great idea.

FYI I have enterprise severs w/ nice zfs raided rootfs, and many enterprise setups, I just have a use case where I want to do USB boot.

What do you think about usb boot, with 2x ssd zfs raid?

Will that even work? Will TrueNAS install/update the bootloader with something like this?

 

[jgreco]

Assuming a reasonably well supported USB chipset, I wouldn't expect it to be a problem. FreeBSD itself does not really differentiate between attachment technologies unless you dig down a bit. USB attached drives show up in a manner similar to SAS drives, but there's usually a bridge chip that is likely to make it so that certain things like SMART do not work. We discourage USB for pool storage because ... well, there's so many things wrong with that. However, for a boot device, especially if you get flash with a wear leveling controller, the main concern becomes what happens if the device becomes disconnected.

 

[Ericloewe]

Smartmontools these days supports a bunch of popular USB to SATA (and to NVMe) bridge chips and get easily get SMART data. With some reasearch, testing and luck, I expect these to make for good boot device options. You can sidestep the crap flash controller and ultra-crap flash typical of USB flash drives by getting a reputable SATA SSD (emphasis on reputable, the SATA SSD market is increasingly a race to the bottom) and still save the real SATA port for a disk.
Of course, El Cheapo bridges will likely not make for a fun day, so buyer beware.

 

[webdawg]

SATADOMs. How did a miss this? I have been grabbing them off ebay.

Helps save that disk space. The only think I have to do is build cables for them.