Question about what I can install on boot drive.

[owsleygarcia95]

I'm currently in the process of building my first nas, and have decided on TrueNAS scale for the OS. Just finished everything with the build tonight, except for the hard drives that are still in the mail. Going to have 8 18tb in a single vdev raid z2. I have a 1tb ssd installed currently. Have a usb install drive ready to go, and going to install it tomorrow so I can learn some things before I get the drives.

I was reading some posts on this forum and came across something I was unaware of. It basically said that the boot drive is only for the OS and can't be used for any apps or virtual machines. I'm new to Linux so I want to make sure I'm understanding this correctly. Will I need 2 seperate ssds to be able to run things like qbittorent and plex?

Sounds like if this is the case the boot drive only needs to be 16-32GB. I found a new 128tb knock off brand on ebay (looks like they're from Ali express) for $15. I found one review that said 400MB/s read 250MB/s write. Would this be good enough for a boot drive?

 

[Arwen]

Yes, TrueNAS, (SCALE or Core), uses dedicated boot devices;

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

And yes, they only need to be 16GByte to 32GByte in size. Yes, a cheap SSD can work, though extremely cheap ones might not last long. Just make sure you back up your configuration.

You can put Apps on your data pool. Or you can use your 1TByte SSD for that purpose. If not Mirrored, make sure you have backups.

Here is some info about TrueNAS SCALE, (and some applies to Core as well);

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

 

[owsleygarcia95]

Yes, TrueNAS, (SCALE or Core), uses dedicated boot devices;

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

And yes, they only need to be 16GByte to 32GByte in size. Yes, a cheap SSD can work, though extremely cheap ones might not last long. Just make sure you back up your configuration.

You can put Apps on your data pool. Or you can use your 1TByte SSD for that purpose. If not Mirrored, make sure you have backups.

Here is some info about TrueNAS SCALE, (and some applies to Core as well);

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

Ok thank you. I read that "I have to waste an entire..." thread before posting this and a few others. I just wanted to make sure I was understanding it properly before I bought another SSD.

So my am4 motherboard has 8 sata ports and I intend to use them all. 2 m.2 slots, but one of them doesn't work if I use all of my sata. I already have a pcie gen3x4 m.2 expansion card I could use for a cheap boot drive. Just wondering if TrueNAS will work properly booting off of a cheap ssd in the gen3x4 card, and I can leave the gen4 1tb in the gen4 motherboard m.2 slot?

 

[Arwen]

So my am4 motherboard has 8 sata ports and I intend to use them all. 2 m.2 slots, but one of them doesn't work if I use all of my sata. I already have a pcie gen3x4 m.2 expansion card I could use for a cheap boot drive. Just wondering if TrueNAS will work properly booting off of a cheap ssd in the gen3x4 card, and I can leave the gen4 1tb in the gen4 motherboard m.2 slot?

The boot-ability off a PCIe M.2 expansion card is more related to your BIOS than TrueNAS.

One alternative is to use a cheap SATA SSD drive in a USB to SATA enclosure. While we discourage USB flash drives for boot purposes, it is more that many USB flash drives are the bottom of the barrel in reliability. Thus, a USB to SATA enclosure with a 2.5" SATA SSD works better than a USB flash drive.

 

[Etorix]

2 m.2 slots, but one of them doesn't work if I use all of my sata.

I'm pretty sure that only the SATA line is shared, and you can use the M.2 slots for NVMe while keeping all SATA ports.

 

[owsleygarcia95]

The boot-ability off a PCIe M.2 expansion card is more related to your BIOS than TrueNAS.

One alternative is to use a cheap SATA SSD drive in a USB to SATA enclosure. While we discourage USB flash drives for boot purposes, it is more that many USB flash drives are the bottom of the barrel in reliability. Thus, a USB to SATA enclosure with a 2.5" SATA SSD works better than a USB flash drive.

Ok thanks. I was able to find a new gen3 128gb nvme on Amazon for $15 from a cheap brand, but it at least has a 5 yr warranty. I'm 99% sure that my PCIe3 slot supports nvme boot disks, according to the manual. Maybe I don't even need the card, and both nvme and all 8 sata, will work simultaneously. The language they use in that part or motherboard manuals is always a bit confusing to me. My am5 asrock board, has a complete diagram or how everything connects to the chipset and cpu, but this am4 board doesn't. I guess the best thing I can do is just test it.

 

[owsleygarcia95]

I'm pretty sure that only the SATA line is shared, and you can use the M.2 slots for NVMe while keeping all SATA ports.

I've always had a hard time interpreting exactly what they mean in MB manuals, where they talk about m.2 slots and sata. The CPU is a 5600G (Cezanne), so I guess both m.2 slots will be limited to gen3, which is fine. Where I'm confused is when it describes Hyper m.2 socket (M2_3). Does it just mean that it supports m.2 sata drives and m.2 nvme drives? So I can use all 8 sata and both m.2 slots?

 

[Arwen]

It seems clear that "M2_3" can do either SATA or NVMe / PCIe, depending on the M.2 module. With a NVMe / PCIe M.2 device installed, the SATA port, (if shared), can be used by the SATA connector.

So you should be good to go.


We have seen some people accidentally buy M.2 SATA devices not understanding the difference. This has led to disabling a SATA port on the system board, like you are trying to avoid. (Or accidentally buying a M.2 NVMe device, on a M.2 SATA only slot...)


This is one of the things I find quite annoying with the M.2 standard. They tried to make it an all in one standard. The old mSATA / mPCIe standard was pretty straight forward. But the M.2 standard includes so many variations, in size AND interfaces supported, that it is confusing.

 

[Etorix]

Having a block diagram in the manual is further benefit of server board, beside ECC support and IPMI ;)
AM4 systems are especially horrible in this respect, due to the number of CPU architectures with different PCIe capacities which could go in there.
But in this case, and for this M.2 slot it seems that there's not even a shared line (or the small print is hidden elsewhere).