Reword pool "Extend" to "Attach a Mirror" to be consistent with command-line terminology

[tannisroot]

In Truenas Scale (no idea how it’s on Core), if you want to convert a single disk pool to a mirrored pool, you use the “Extend” feature in “Devices” menu. However, this wording is very confusing and even misleading to an extent. Under the hood, the equivalent of this feature is the “zpool attach” command, and there is no good reason that it’s named “Extend” in GUI. One might think that this “Extend” feature is actually for adding additional space to the pool, because that is kind of the primary meaning of the word “extend”.
It would be much more clear and straight-forward for a novice user if this feature we renamed to “Attach” or “Attach a Mirror” to be consistent with the official ZFS terminology. Also, it wouldn’t hurt if there was a tooltip or a warning that told in detail to the user that this feature is for adding a mirror, since currently there is nothing in the GUI that would explain to the user what the feature is for before they proceed with it.
In fact, you can see in this forum post that other users also voice their frustration with the wording:
https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/add-mirror-disk-to-existing-pool.101289/
If you think the same, please support this suggestion ticket on Jira:
https://ixsystems.atlassian.net/browse/NAS-125962

 

[Arwen]

You have my vote!

@tannisroot - You might see if you can vote for your own issue. If it works, that is one more vote .

Lets make this the first issue with 1,000 votes! Okay, 100 would probably work. But, Extend for Mirroring? That is so silly as to be quite confusing.

For those that don't use Jira, the voting is the upper right thumbs up symbol. That brings up a popup where you can vote for the issue.

 

[morganL]

You have my vote!

@tannisroot - You might see if you can vote for your own issue. If it works, that is one more vote .

Lets make this the first issue with 1,000 votes! Okay, 100 would probably work. But, Extend for Mirroring? That is so silly as to be quite confusing.

For those that don't use Jira, the voting is the upper right thumbs up symbol. That brings up a popup where you can vote for the issue.

It may not be deliberate, but we do plan to support RAIDZ expansion in 2024.. in this case adding a drive to a VDEV is an "extension".

 

[tannisroot]

It may not be deliberate, but we do plan to support RAIDZ expansion in 2024.. in this case adding a drive to a VDEV is an "extension".

Makes even more sense to distinguish the 2 features! Make the "Extend" button actually extend a RAIDZ pool and a separate "Attach" button attach a mirror, as per under the hood CLI terminology.

 

[morganL]

Makes even more sense to distinguish the 2 features! Make the "Extend" button actually extend a RAIDZ pool and a separate "Attach" button attach a mirror, as per under the hood CLI terminology.

I prefer the UI to focus on being understandable and easy to use without knowing much about ZFS. The world has too few ZFS experts.

If the ZFS terminiology is good... then use it. If not, use something better and explain it in documentation.

 

[sretalla]

If the ZFS terminiology is good... then use it. If not, use something better and explain it in documentation.

Seems you're agreeing with the proposal... ZFS calls it attach (not extend... and there isn't even a command called that for now).

I can agree that in the GUI, you aren't constrained to the exact command name, so why not make it something like "attach (mirror)"?

That still leaves you plenty of room for the extend/expand or whatever comes with RAIDZ expansion when it arrives.

 

[tannisroot]

I prefer the UI to focus on being understandable and easy to use without knowing much about ZFS. The world has too few ZFS experts.

If the ZFS terminiology is good... then use it. If not, use something better and explain it in documentation.

This is my personal experience of course, but after doing some googling "how to add a mirror to an existing drive in Truenas" and variations of, and reading reddit posts and documentation (official ZFS docs) that popped up, what I got was that I need to "attach".
I did not get official documentation from iX on how to do it in Truenas (Core or Scale) in search results that explained to me that in Truenas, "Extend" is equal to attach, and how to find the button that does it, I only figured it out because I found that above mentioned old post discussing this and also voicing frustration with the wording, and that I found only after googling something like "how to attach mirror in truenas scale".

I imagine the experience of majority of users, corporate or not, would probably be similar, so it would make sense to go with the flow and not overcomplicate with conflicting terminology.

 

[tannisroot]

I prefer the UI to focus on being understandable and easy to use without knowing much about ZFS. The world has too few ZFS experts.

If the ZFS terminiology is good... then use it. If not, use something better and explain it in documentation.

I actually looked up official documentation article called "Managing Pools", and the way "Extend" is used is in reference to increasing pool size with more VDEVs. Conversion of a single disk to a mirror or attachment of more mirror devices is not covered by that term at all, or by any term.

 

[morganL]

This is my personal experience of course, but after doing some googling "how to add a mirror to an existing drive in Truenas" and variations of, and reading reddit posts and documentation (official ZFS docs) that popped up, what I got was that I need to "attach".
I did not get official documentation from iX on how to do it in Truenas (Core or Scale) in search results that explained to me that in Truenas, "Extend" is equal to attach, and how to find the button that does it, I only figured it out because I found that above mentioned old post discussing this and also voicing frustration with the wording, and that I found only after googling something like "how to attach mirror in truenas scale".

I imagine the experience of majority of users, corporate or not, would probably be similar, so it would make sense to go with the flow and not overcomplicate with conflicting terminology.

I'd agree the documentation on this specific function is poor.... it generally assumes you ar creating whole pool or adding a vdev.

Its a good statement to make via the "feedback" option on the documentation. that's how the docs get better.