What to use as a boot drive? (HPE MicroServer Gen 10 Plus)

GardG

Cadet
Joined
Dec 5, 2020
Messages
9
Hi all,
I'm considering getting a HPE MicroServer Gen10 Plus Performance to run TrueNAS. It's a good compromise in cost, size and noise for my small business. There's just one thing I'm not quite sure about: it has 4 drive bays, a PCIe slot, an internal USB2 and some external USB3. What should I boot TrueNAS from?

Ideally I'd like to use the LFF drive bays for storage spinners only, and the PCIe slot for a 10G SFP NIC. That leaves me with the internal USB2 header … I'm reading some conflicting information on whether it would be OK to boot TrueNAS from a USB stick. Some say it's all loaded into RAM anyway, others say it's don't, and that USB sticks are too unreliable.

Another option could be the Qnap QM2 card with combined 10GbE and 2x NVMe, but for some idiotic reason it's PCIe x4 only. Feels like a stupid limitation.

Then there's this thing … Hideously expensive though.

Thoughts?
 

Etorix

Wizard
Joined
Dec 30, 2020
Messages
2,110
The common advice is now to avoid USB thumb drives because ZFS throws too much activity at them and quickly wears them out. This likely applies to (micro)SD cards.
You may attach a small SATA SSD to a SATA-to-USB adapter.
 

ThreeDee

Guru
Joined
Jun 13, 2013
Messages
698
I ran a 120GB SSD powered off of the internal USB port with a SATA to USB cable for quite awhile on my old Intel server board setup
 

GardG

Cadet
Joined
Dec 5, 2020
Messages
9
Cheers! This sounds reasonable. Could I use a single USB to dual SATA adapter for redundant system drives? (With the adapter itself being a single point of failure, obviously)

And would there be a terrible performance hit if connecting over USB2? I don't have any internal USB3 headers. Could of course loop back a cable or two from the rear, but that just doesn't feel quite as convincing
 

Constantin

Vampire Pig
Joined
May 19, 2017
Messages
1,828
My hierarchy:
  1. Datacenter-quality SSD via SATA or m.2
  2. SATADOM
  3. m.2 SSD (NVME or mSATA)
  4. USB-powered / interfaced "real" SSD
  5. "High-endurance" and like SD cards meant for IP cameras from a quality OEM via USB.
I use SATADOM because I have two such slots on my motherboard, they take up almost no space, and the supermicro-built media is meant to be good for years. Standard USB Flash sticks should not be used other than for the initial setup. If the data stored on the NAS is important, then treat the infrastructure around it appropriately.
 

ThreeDee

Guru
Joined
Jun 13, 2013
Messages
698
Cheers! This sounds reasonable. Could I use a single USB to dual SATA adapter for redundant system drives? (With the adapter itself being a single point of failure, obviously)

And would there be a terrible performance hit if connecting over USB2? I don't have any internal USB3 headers. Could of course loop back a cable or two from the rear, but that just doesn't feel quite as convincing
I don't know that the USB header would be enough to power 2 SSD's or not or that even such an adapter actually exists .. and my internal USB header was USB2.

https://usb.brando.com/usb-3-0-to-dual-sata-cable_p01690c042d15.html requires external power though
 
Last edited:

Constantin

Vampire Pig
Joined
May 19, 2017
Messages
1,828
USB2 is likely adequate for the boot drives. Yes, it’s not as fast as most SSDs on good days, at the same time the boot drives are not meant to set speed records.

However, where this might might really bite is if SWAP is enabled on the boot drives and subsequently used. The remedy is obvious - add more memory to avoid using swap. RAM will be much faster than just about any permanent media you present to the average NAS. Swap use should be nonexistent, if possible, and I wish my NAS would alert me if it did resort to swap.
 
Last edited:

Alecmascot

Guru
Joined
Mar 18, 2014
Messages
1,175
I used these in my HP Microservers and now in my two Dell T110ii:

SEDNA - PCI Express mSATA III (6G) SSD Adapter
 

GardG

Cadet
Joined
Dec 5, 2020
Messages
9
Come to think of it, a USB to mSATA adapter would be small enough that I could pop it right into the internal USB2 and not have to worry about (physically) mounting it properly. I think that might be the thing for a boot drive that keeps the PCIe free.

Should I get a second (external) USB-mSATA for boot drive backup/mirroring, or is it sufficient to keep a cold spare and a config backup? (Todo: read up on TrueNAS disaster recovery)

I'll make sure to keep the swap away from the USB2 connected drive - can I allocate some space on the spinners for that? (perhaps later to be moved to fast NVMe if I upgrade with a Synology E10M20 at some point, apparently it works on TrueNAS)
 

Constantin

Vampire Pig
Joined
May 19, 2017
Messages
1,828
I'd mirror it for the simple reason that it will then automatically be confectioned for use, even if its boot sequence priority needs to be potentially changed.

As for swap, I believe the setup process gives you a choice over that IF the boot drive is over 64GB. Otherwise, it defaults to the data drives, IIRC.
 
Top