Is booting and storage possible on a single SSD?

[soviut]

I've built a homelab computer using a Framework mainboard (13th Gen Intel i5, 32GB RAM, 2TB NVMe SSD). It has no additional storage as this is primarily meant for virtualization and apps. S not a Plex server and not a place I'm backing anything up to.

I've installed TrueNAS Scale from USB to the SSD and can connect via the web UI. However, I'm unable to configure storage since the system SSD does not appear in the list of available drives. The Framework only has space for a single SSD.

Is it possible to configure (or perhaps partition) the SSD to be able to act as both a boot drive and a storage pool?

 

[asap2go]

In theory but on the next backup your system may break.
Just install truenas on a small ssd or on a mirror of USB sticks.

 

[joeschmuck]

It has no additional storage as this is primarily meant for virtualization and apps

Recommend you try ESXi (the free stuff) or Proxmox (also free) vice using TrueNAS if all you need is to virtualize.

 

[soviut]

Recommend you try ESXi (the free stuff) or Proxmox (also free) vice using TrueNAS if all you need is to virtualize.

When I say virtualization, I specifically meant Docker/Containers/Apps, not VMs. I want a fairly turn-key solution to install apps and right now that seems to be either TrueNAS or Unraid. Many apps still require a storage pool so that's why I'm trying to figure out how to provide some of the system SSD as storage.

Also I did briefly consider Proxmox, however, it looked like it took a lot of work to setup and to manage. At that point, I could probably roll my own solution by hand coding docker-compose.yml files and have them start on launch.

 

[soviut]

In theory but on the next backup your system may break.
Just install truenas on a small ssd or on a mirror of USB sticks.

What backup?

This is a laptop mainboard and only has a single SSD slot so I can't put a secondary system drive in it. I'd also really like to avoid booting from USB sticks or using them as storage when I have a fast 2TB SSD in this thing.

 

[asap2go]

What backup?

This is a laptop mainboard and only has a single SSD slot so I can't put a secondary system drive in it. I'd also really like to avoid booting from USB sticks or using them as storage when I have a fast 2TB SSD in this thing.

"Backup" shoul've been "Update", sorry.
If you can't install a second ssd then USB is your only option left for TrueNAS.

 

[soviut]

"Backup" shoul've been "Update", sorry.
If you can't install a second ssd then USB is your only option left for TrueNAS.

It has to be a separate piece of hardware? There's no way to create a second partition on the same disk and use that as a storage volume?

 

[asap2go]

It has to be a separate piece of hardware? There's no way to create a second partition on the same disk and use that as a storage volume?

There is. But it might break on every update. And tbh I have no idea what kind of command line magic is necessary to do this.
@Patrick M. Hausen might know, but will probably tell you the same.

Install truenas on USB/SD card and backup your config. Even if your boot drive goes down then you can swap sticks, reinstall and import the config. 15 minutes and your running again.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

I know how it works with TrueNAS CORE and I am confident that an update won't break that setup (probably!) because I know how the FreeBSD boot process for ZFS works and how TrueNAS CORE identifies the partitions by UUID.

I have no idea how all that works in Linux and if I understand the OP correctly the goal is to run TN SCALE because "apps".

Sorry, no idea. Also my post for CORE is pretty outdated by now.

General idea:

1. Get a 16 or 32 G USB drive and install to your SSD and the USB drive as a mirrored configuration.
2. The installer will only use <size of USB drive> on your SSD, too,
3. Detach USB drive from boot pool - you should now have a proper setup but plenty of leftover space.
4. Create another ZFS partition in the remaining space on your SSD - no idea for Linux.
5. Create storage pool on the command line in that partition adhering to TN standards - no idea for Linux.
6. Export that pool from the command line.
7. Re-import that pool from the UI.

Good luck.

 

[Arwen]

TrueNAS was written for the Enterprise market, not SOHO so certain things are not friendly to the SOHO users.

I have to waste an entire drive just for booting?

This resource was originally created by user: jgreco on the TrueNAS Community Forums Archive. Please DM this account or comment in this thread to claim it. With the advent of TrueNAS Scale, we seem to be getting a large number of people from the Linux community who are not quite grasping what...

www.truenas.com

While it is possible to manually share a boot drive with data, you are basically on your own. Meaning most of us don't do that, and when people come here for help recovering from that, we simply say;

• Install to a new boot disk
• Upload your saved configuration
• And if needed, restore your data pool from backups

This basically means we may not be able to help with fully customized installations. TrueNAS is designed as firmware with a configuration backup, and data pools. Not as a full OS with a NAS application. Lots of new users come in thinking that TrueNAS MUST be customizable or is a Linux OS distro. Neither is the case.

 

[Joe-freenas]

TrueNAS was written for the Enterprise market, not SOHO so certain things are not friendly to the SOHO users.

I have to waste an entire drive just for booting?

This resource was originally created by user: jgreco on the TrueNAS Community Forums Archive. Please DM this account or comment in this thread to claim it. With the advent of TrueNAS Scale, we seem to be getting a large number of people from the Linux community who are not quite grasping what...

www.truenas.com

While it is possible to manually share a boot drive with data, you are basically on your own. Meaning most of us don't do that, and when people come here for help recovering from that, we simply say;

• Install to a new boot disk
• Upload your saved configuration
• And if needed, restore your data pool from backups

This basically means we may not be able to help with fully customized installations. TrueNAS is designed as firmware with a configuration backup, and data pools. Not as a full OS with a NAS application. Lots of new users come in thinking that TrueNAS MUST be customizable or is a Linux OS distro. Neither is the case.

Don't need to listen to the zealots that claim "enterprise" use-only, when this is nothing more than how Unix/Linux works!

Of course you MUST have a reliable SSD to begin with, but rest assured that this works well and an update will NOT break it as UNLESS the
update/upgrade re-formats/re-partitions the boot-pool.

Of course too that CERTAIN older USB 3.0 implementations/chipsets/firmware are flaky, but that is NOT a USB issue, but a *specific* USB standard implementation issue!

I have done enough BSD, FreeNAS, XigmaNAS, OMV, embedded setups for the last 30 years that I can ASSURE you a perfectly stable PRODUCTION system, using USB 3.0 SATA adapters + Samsung/Intel 128GB SATA SSD ($30 dollars max for both!).

You can even modify the truenas-installer so it DOES NOT use the whole SSD (so you can then create a partition for a ZFS Pool), but, because it is USB, I don't stress it and usually only use the USB SSD as boot-pool.

For an app server, you probably want the container directory on a SATA/NvME SSD.

Just migrated 100% of my own and client systems from ESXi to TrueNAS Scale and could not be happier as now I can do 100% what I want:

-Hourly FULL backups (yes, incremental, but still 100% of the VM data!).
-Suspend VM just before taking ZFS Snapshot (Truenas Snapshot Task).
-Suspend VM just before taking ZFS Snapshot (Cron Task/script).
-Replicate ZFS Snapshot locally and remote (Truenas Snapshot Task).
-Replicate ZFS Snapshot locally and remote (Cron Task/script).
-Suspend VMs when rebooting/shutdown.
-Restore VMs after reboot/shutdown.

I was happy enough with free ESXi + Ghettovcb (backup VM files to NFS server once a week/month) but this new, and now proven solution,
YES, booting from a USB 3.0 SSD drive, for the last 9+ years since TN Core. Used to use Samsung flash drives, but then upgraded to real SATA SSDs (even cheaper!) with Scale and the apps/container pool), and now with TN Scale, is 99% of what I want/need (Xen Orchestra is great, but native Linux KVM is the future!).

Of course that I never trust any media so I have a daily cron job that does backup /root, /home /data and a few other data/info and paths to local mirrored HDD + remote mirrored HDD.

I can tell where IX people are going with this, so I have no rush to wait for the HA capabilities!
Just have good configs, AND data backups and the rest is just Unix/Linux and your time/experience/expertise!

 

[jgreco]

When I say virtualization, I specifically meant Docker/Containers/Apps, not VMs.

Run CORE and set up a bhyve VM running Linux. Run your Docker/Containers/etc in that using the classic Linux designs. You get the best of all worlds.

 

[Arwen]

Don't need to listen to the zealots that claim "enterprise" use-only, when this is nothing more than how Unix/Linux works!
...

I am not a zealot, nor do I run all my ZFS on Enterprise hardware. Even have it on my laptop and media server.


What I was trying to say to the original poster, is that unless they can perform the dual use boot device work themselves, (which you seem to be able to do), doing so is not recommended.

The absolute biggest reason I say that, is I won't take responsibility if things go wrong. Like if they come back in a year or more because they changed out a shared device without taking care of both sides, boot & data pools.

Over the last 2 years, (mostly since SCALE has been released), we have seen a plethora of people making choices that lead to problems later. Then wanting help to fix it. I've been trying to let people know what makes a reliable system.

And to be clear, I not talking about several people making less than ideal choices. Or dozens, I am talking about hundreds of people, some loosing data, some unable to replicate the manual change they made to make their consumer hardware work. Check the forums if you doubt me. Now we were able to help some, okay many, but others had to restore from backups. Or even just accept the data loss.

 

[asap2go]

I am not a zealot, nor do I run all my ZFS on Enterprise hardware. Even have it on my laptop and media server.


What I was trying to say to the original poster, is that unless they can perform the dual use boot device work themselves, (which you seem to be able to do), doing so is not recommended.

The absolute biggest reason I say that, is I won't take responsibility if things go wrong. Like if they come back in a year or more because they changed out a shared device without taking care of both sides, boot & data pools.

Over the last 2 years, (mostly since SCALE has been released), we have seen a plethora of people making choices that lead to problems later. Then wanting help to fix it. I've been trying to let people know what makes a reliable system.

And to be clear, I not talking about several people making less than ideal choices. Or dozens, I am talking about hundreds of people, some loosing data, some unable to replicate the manual change they made to make their consumer hardware work. Check the forums if you doubt me. Now we were able to help some, okay many, but others had to restore from backups. Or even just accept the data loss.

I'd be careful with partitioning.
I had a 1 TB SSD underprovisioned it to 256GB and added the partition as L2ARC under Core.
Worked until I upgraded to Scale. Then it suddenly used the whole drive.
For L2ARC that's not an issue but if that was a boot drive it would've been annoying.
So I disagree that these setups are stable in terms of persisting through updates/upgrades.

 

[joeschmuck]

I too have partitioned my SSD boot device back in the FreeNAS days. It's an easy process, however I felt it was more trouble than it's worth. You should purchase a SSD boot device based off cost, not capacity these days. Remember that you paid $20 for the device, not that it has 220GB of space not being utilized. You could think of it as significant over-provisioning .

You do have the option to place your SWAP partition on your SSD boot drive during the installation phase should you desire that. Most folks here may warn you against that but that is your decision to make. If you build your system properly you should never need to use SWAP space, but you should have it available should it be needed once in a blue moon.