Review Storage Needs Creating a Pool TrueNAS uses ZFS data storage pools to efficiently store and protect data.
What's a pool? expand Storage pools attach drives organized into virtual devices called VDEVs. ZFS and TrueNAS periodically review and heal when discovering a bad block in a pool. Drives arranged inside VDEVs provide varying amounts of redundancy and performance. ZFS and VDEVs combined create high-performance pools that maximize data lifetime. Review Storage Needs We strongly recommend that you review your available system resources and plan your storage use case before creating a storage pool.
Fusion Pools are also known as ZFS allocation classes, ZFS special vdevs, and metadata vdevs (Metadata vdev type on the Pool Manager screen.).
What's a special VDEV? expand A special VDEV can store metadata such as file locations and allocation tables. The allocations in the special class are dedicated to specific block types. By default, this includes all metadata, the indirect blocks of user data, and any deduplication tables. The class can also be provisioned to accept small file blocks.
Pool Creation Wizard General Info Data Log (Optional) Spare (Optional) Cache (Optional) Metadata (Optional) Dedup (Optional) Advanced Options Review The Pool Creation Wizard includes the wizard configuration screens, a configuration preview, and an inventory list of disks available on the system.
The Create Pool button at the top right of the Storage Dashboard screen opens the Pool Creation Wizard.
Figure 1: Pool Creation Wizard The Configuration Preview displays a list of Pool and VDEV settings that dynamically update as you configure settings in the wizard.
No Pools Screen Storage Dashboard Storage Dashboard Widgets Pool Status Upgrade Dialog Section Contents The Storage Dashboard screen, allows users configure and manage storage resources such as pools (VDEVs), datasets, and disks, and to keep the pool healthy (scrub). The dashboard widgets organize functions related to storage resources.
No Pools Screen The No Pools screen displays before you add the first pool.
Figure 1: Storage Dashboard without Pools The Create Pool button in the center of the screen opens the Pool Manager screen.
ZFS Info Widget (VDEV) Disk Widgets ZFS Info Widget (Drives) Hardware Disk Encryption Widget S.M.A.R.T. Info for Devicename Widget Disk Info Widget The Devices screen lists VDEVS configured for the selected pool. Go to Storage > Topology > Manage Devices to view the Devices screen.
Figure 1: Devices Data VDEV Unexpanded Click anywhere on the VDEV to see the drives included in it and the ZFS Info widget for that VDEV.
