Have I understood how drives work

[Robti]

Hi I am looking for an explanation of shared folder please, I thought shared folder was just that as the name suggests if I wanted to share any files it would be on here and drive pools would be for back up of files, is this correct , and if so single or pool and size recommendations?
Thanks

 

[sretalla]

So, I think you've not done a great job of explaining what you do understand and what it is you want to know.

If you've understood the relationship between disks, pools and folders (directories) is unclear, so I'll start with that:

A disk or more than one disk can form a VDEV (virtual device), with which you can then construct a pool (using one or more VDEVs).

VDEVs in a pool are "striped" together and they can be of the types RAIDZ1-3, Mirror, or stripe. Stripe has no redundancy, so is usually not recommended for data you want to keep. Loss of any entire VDEV will mean loss of the pool, so plan carefully for keeping your data (and do a bunch of reading about ZFS if you want to go much further).

Once you have a pool (made of VDEVs), you can then use datasets (filesystems) or ZVOLs (block storage) to use the space provided by the pool.

Datasets can be nested (one within another) and all datasets are somewhere nested in the pool root dataset (which has the same name as the pool).

Directories (folders) can be created inside datasets and datasets themselves behave (mostly) like directories also, although they offer a point of difference on a number of settings like snapshot frequency, block size, encryption, compression and many other things.

You can share a directory using one of the offered services (SMB, NFS, AFP, WebDav).

 

[Robti]

Hi thanks for your reply, in simple terms I know what pools,vdevs are but I am lost, so after installing truenas on a ssd then using 2 x 500Gb drives I create my first pool, now I am left with a 3Tb and 2Tb spare drives. My aim is to have storage to back up files for safe storage and a shared storage that my family can access for shared media through plex

 

[sretalla]

You could use one of the HDDs as a storage pool for storing and sharing and then have a replication task to the second HDD as a backup pool. (you would need to consider how the capacity would go there as you have a bigger drive).

 

[Robti]

Okay so you can have as many pools as you want and use the vdevs for anything, shared storage, backup files and plugins, and the plugins go where in the devs, in a separate one named plugins or in the actual plugins that you are creating, eg plex would i create a vdev called plex and put the plugin in that all with the storage that I want to share or what ?
Thanks

 

[sretalla]

Okay so you can have as many pools as you want and use the vdevs for anything

Nearly...

VDEVs make up your pool (and don't exist on their own to be used separately in any way).

You can use the pool (by creating datasets in it) for anything ...

and the plugins go where in the devs, in a separate one named plugins or in the actual plugins that you are creating, eg plex would i create a vdev called plex and put the plugin in that all with the storage that I want to share or what ?

Plugins are jails.

Jails live in the pool that you selected for them to live in.

Under /mnt/PoolYouSelected/iocage/jails

Applications

Describes how to install applications on TrueNAS CORE.

www.truenas.com

 

[Robti]

Nearly...

VDEVs make up your pool (and don't exist on their own to be used separately in any way).

You can use the pool (by creating datasets in it) for anything ...


Under /mnt/PoolYouSelected/iocage/jails

Applications

Describes how to install applications on TrueNAS CORE.

www.truenas.com

Thanks I will have a read at that link you posted and finally things are becoming clearer just this now

Plugins are jails.

Jails live in the pool that you selected for them to live in.

So Off for a read on plex plugin and where to install
Many thanks