Incredibly slow install, now won't boot

[aconnor]

Hi,
New to TrueNAS. I was using this system before with Proxmox and no issues, I'm guessing I'll have to remove or change some hardware to fix this, any hints on what I should remove?
Also- the NVMe drives still have data- I was hoping to import the zpools into TrueNAS...

Intel NUC917QNX 6 core/ 12 thread i7
64GB RAM
2x Intel 660p 2TB NVMe
1x Intel 665p 2TB NVMe
Intel X520 dual port 10GB-e PCI x4 card (Chinese clone probably)
2x SanDisk 256GB Extreme Go 400Mb/s USB sticks for mirrored boot drive

Anyway, I'll post back if I figure it out

 

[aconnor]

oops should have noted the boot issue. After leaving it overnight, I see on screen-

middlewared: setting up plugins (account) [9/91]

and it will not progress further

 

[aconnor]

ok maybe I look like I'm talking to myself here, as the first comment has not yet passed moderation, but I do have news-

The system booted when I removed the 10gb-e card. It's incredibly slow but I'm guessing this is either
1. because I used USB sticks for boot drive despite recommendations against (hey- they are 400MB/s sticks though!)
2. it's trying to import an existing zpool - let's see what happens

 

[NugentS]

1. An Intel X520 is normally a PCIe X8 card. So if you have an X4 I would be somewhat suspicious of it.
2. Booting from USB whilst not reccomended is possible and shouldn't be massively slower than booting from HDD or SSD.

 

[aconnor]

thanks @NugentS
Sounds like the issues are possible to overcome. Odd about the PCI card, but you're right- I haven't seen another dual port x4 card. I might switch to an external NVMe SSD in a USB case for a boot drive, was hoping to not have to strap anything to the box, but there's no room left inside...

cheers

 

[aconnor]

Just to cover this off for posterity-

The issue with having 2x 400MB/s USB Sticks in ZFS appears to have been 2 things
1. ZFS. When I removed 1 stick and did a single boot disk it was a lot better
2. I am dumb for believing that these sticks had 400MB/s sustained throughput

So here's the essential issue- the NUC only has 2 USB headers internally and both are USB-2. So I needed a fast external disk. I had a 1TB Samsung NVME in a Thunderbolt case, but it wouldn't boot from that (possibly firmware issue, Mayne TrueNAS SCALE won't boot from Thunderbolt but I later found booting from Thunderbolt was turned off in BIOS).

Looking at USB drives, I figured the 256GB SanDisk Extreme Go USB 3.2 would be ok, and bought 2 of those for a mirror. Those were no good so I bought 2x 500GB Kingston XS2000 USB 3.2 x2 which promise up to 2000MB/s.

What I had forgotten was this- all of these drives will only transfer at that rate until their fast cache is exhausted. So the pitiful sustained speeds I was seeing were mostly drive related. And continued with the Kingston SSD- according to Anandtech these only sustain 95MB/s with big files.

So I'm not pissed off, but that was an expensive lesson, and I'm about to install Win10 so I can upgrade the Thunderbolt Firmware (Seriously Intel? Why make me use Windows to upgrade firmware?)