Best Boot Drive Size for FreeNAS

[rfielder]

Is there a consensus for the best size of a FreeNAS boot drive?

I know it can be small. Like, very small.

I will need to purchase a drive for my build. Going to use an old 160Gb hard drive first, as I learn to install and configure. For the final build, a new drive needs to be purchased. That drive will be an NVMe, somewhere between 120Gb and 1Tb.

Does anything else get put onto the boot drive by FreeNAS if there is space?

Are there any advantages to FreeNAS if you go larger, or smaller, for the boot drive?

I know there are advantages to an SSD by going a bit bigger. I have no problem investing in a 500Gb or 1Tb drive if there are advantages to FreeNAS.

What do everyone thing?

Thanks in advance?

 

[Ericloewe]

1 TB is massively excessive. Really, 120 GB are more than enough for basically anyone using FreeNAS.

 

[melloa]

120 GB will do it. Thing on two, so you can mirror the boot drives.

 

[JaimieV]

NVMe is overkill, SATA is fine. Second hand ~80gig Intel 320 series server-grade SSDs are popular for boot, plenty on ebay for £12 or so. As melloa says, set up a mirror pair.

And no, the only other thing you can put on the boot is the System Dataset. Which is a pity, I'd be very happy to be able to choose to put the jails dataset on there or swap.

 

[rfielder]

Thanks for the advice!

I remember reading someplace that FreeNAS might put other stuff on the boot drive, but I can't find that reference again, so maybe I have misremembered.

NVMe is gross overkill, but by going that route, I leave another SATA connector free for a data drive. I need to buy a boot drive, and I don't buy used flash drives, and the price difference is not great, so I might as well get the NVMe drive and ensure that adding drives in the future is not blocked and does not require adding a PCIe SATA controller.

 

[JaimieV]

Entirely reasonable :) Wanted to mention it because lots of people turn up here from a "must have the boot drive be super fast" desktoppy background. Port saving is a fine justification. Go small - since there's nothing to put on it other than sub-8gig boot volumes, there's no purpose in large ones.

 

[rfielder]

I understand that FreeNAS does not benefit from a fast boot drive.

Other considerstions I give when buying an SSD:#
Warranty - 5 years if possible
Price vs size - is it on sale?
Long term use - might I reuse this elsewhere?
Size vs wear leveling, etc

As a result, I think the best one for me is the Intel 760P 256Gb NVMe M.2 drive. It is on sale for $74CDN.

I can get a WD Blue 240GB 2.5" drive for $55CDN, which I think also has a 5 year warranty. A mirror setup would use two SATA ports, leaving me only 6 ports free. I want those two SATA ports free for now, in case it turns out that six 8Tb drives in RAID 6 equivilant setup is not sufficient.

As to using two in a mirror config - I will have to see if there are two NVMe slots on the motherboard. I like the idea.

I will be using an old 160Gb SATA drive for the first setups - I expect to be doing this a few times, learning how to set up, how to config, wipe, repeat a few times. All part of the learning curve.

 

[danb35]

I remember reading someplace that FreeNAS might put other stuff on the boot drive,

FreeNAS initially puts the .system dataset on the boot pool. Once you create a data pool, though, it's moved there automatically.

As far as device size, at least 16 GB, but I wouldn't pay any more for larger than ~120 GB.

 

[rfielder]

FreeNAS initially puts the .system dataset on the boot pool. Once you create a data pool, though, it's moved there automatically.

As far as device size, at least 16 GB, but I wouldn't pay any more for larger than ~120 GB.

Thanks!

 

[rfielder]

I stand corrected on warranty vs price!

I can get a Corsair Force Series MP300 120GB M.2 PCIe SSD drive for $41.00CND, and it has a 5 year warranty!

Assuming the store has any in stock, of course.

Cool! Saving a bit more is always a good thing. Concensus here seems to be that 120Gb is more than sufficient.

 

[nephri]

I'm using 64Gb SATA DOM (2 in mirror) and it's large enough...