Pool Creation Wizard

TrueNAS uses ZFS data storage pools to efficiently store and protect data.

We strongly recommend that you review your available system resources and plan your storage use case before creating a storage pool.

• Allocating more drives to a pool increases redundancy when storing critical information.
• Maximizing total available storage at the expense of redundancy or performance entails allocating large-volume disks and configuring a pool for minimal redundancy.
• Maximizing pool performance entails installing and allocating high-speed SSD drives to a pool.
• Security requirements can mean the pool must be created with ZFS encryption.
• RAIDz pool layouts are well-suited for general use cases and especially smaller (<10) data VDEVS or storage scenarios that involve storing multitudes of small data blocks.
• dRAID pool layouts are useful in specific situations where large disk count (>100) arrays need improved resilver times due to increased disk failure rates and the array is intended to store large data blocks. TrueNAS recommends defaulting to a RAIDz layout generally and whenever a dRAID vdev would have fewer than 10 data storage devices.

Determining your specific storage requirements is a critical step before creating a pool. The ZFS and dRAID primers provide a starting point to learn about the strengths and costs of different storage pool layouts.

To create a pool using the Pool Creation Wizard.

1. Enter a name. Use up to 50 lower case alpha-numeric and permitted special characters that conform to ZFS naming conventions. The pool name contributes to the maximum character length for datasets so it is limited to 50 characters.

   The pool name cannot change after creation.

2. Create the required data VDEV.

   Select the layout from the Layout dropdown list, then either use the Automated Disk Selection fields to select and add the disks, or click Manual Disk Selection to add specific disks to the chosen Layout.

   dRAID layouts do not have the Manual Disk Selection button and instead show additional Automated Disk Selection fields. When configuring a dRAID data VDEV, first choose a Disk Size then select a Data Devices number. The remaining fields update based on the Data Devices and dRAID layout selections.

   Click Save And Go To Review if you do not want to add other VDEV types to the pool, or click Next to move to the next wizard screen.

3. Add any other optional VDEVs as determined by your specific storage redundancy and performance requirements.

4. Click Create Pool on the Review wizard screen to add the pool.

Related Storage Articles

• Adding and Managing Datasets
• Adding and Managing Zvols
• Disks
• SCALE Hardware Guide
• Zvol Screens
• Fusion Pools
• Pool Creation Wizard
• Storage Dashboard
• Managing User or Group Quotas