Upgrading the Boot Pool

[felippe]

I've been using TrueNAS for the past couple of months and I quite like it. I am already thinking of upgrading it - sort of. The current boot drive is a PNY 120GB SSD, which seems a waste of capacity; at least it was cheap. The plan is to replace it with two InnoDisk SATA DOMs, 16GB each, and use the 120GB SSD to replace the spinning drive of an old laptop.

I assume the traditional way is to save the current config, reinstall TrueNAS from scratch using the installation media, then restore the previous configuration.

But I would like to try something else:

• Shut down the server, install both SATA DOMs, then power up the server.
• Create a mirrored configuration by attaching to the boot pool as a member, one of the two SATA DOMs.
• make sure the SSD is mirrored to the SATA DOM.
• Replace the the old SSD in the boot pool with the second SATA DOM.
• make sure the SATA DOM which was first attached to the boot pool is mirrored to the second SATA DOM.
• Shut down the server, remove the old SSD, power up the server.

I can't see any pros and cons for any of the two methods; I would try the second one just because it is something new for me (I have already installed TrueNAS once). What are your opinions?

 

[Spearfoot]

I've been using TrueNAS for the past couple of months and I quite like it. I am already thinking of upgrading it - sort of. The current boot drive is a PNY 120GB SSD, which seems a waste of capacity; at least it was cheap. The plan is to replace it with two InnoDisk SATA DOMs, 16GB each, and use the 120GB SSD to replace the spinning drive of an old laptop.

I assume the traditional way is to save the current config, reinstall TrueNAS from scratch using the installation media, then restore the previous configuration.

But I would like to try something else:

• Shut down the server, install both SATA DOMs, then power up the server.
• Create a mirrored configuration by attaching to the boot pool as a member, one of the two SATA DOMs.
• make sure the SSD is mirrored to the SATA DOM.
• Replace the the old SSD in the boot pool with the second SATA DOM.
• make sure the SATA DOM which was first attached to the boot pool is mirrored to the second SATA DOM.
• Shut down the server, remove the old SSD, power up the server.

I can't see any pros and cons for any of the two methods; I would try the second one just because it is something new for me (I have already installed TrueNAS once). What are your opinions?

It won't work, because of the difference in capacity of the SSD and the SATA DOMs. Also, even if all three disks were the same size, I'm not sure if you can create a mirror by adding another disk to a single-disk striped pool. At least, I've never tried it.

You're probably better off just saving your config and reinstalling on the two new drives.

 

[Etorix]

You can change a single drive vdev into a mirror, but the new drive has to be at least as large as the old one. Reinstalling is the only way here.

 

[felippe]

I replaced the SSD with the two new SATA DOMs, and an additional 120GB NVME drive on a PCIe to M.2 adapter which I am going to use for plug-ins and VMs. I followed the official advice for replacing the boot drive(s) and everything went very smooth. I couldn’t believe how easy it was.