transfer usb boot to dual ssd

[doglover]

Hello, good morning. I want to transfer boot from single usb thumb drive to dual internal sata ssds.
I've read the manual and some forums, etc, and request some advice please.
I want to keep my configurations. I also want to access the full size of the ssd drives.
To do this, seems pretty clear I need to do a clean install and then load back the config file.
I read about a few options, mostly different orders of operations as below.

1. The manual talks about doing a clean install, and install to dual media to get the mirror, and this way you get a 16 gb swap partition which I gather is desireable. Then you reboot and point bios to the first ssd drive, yes? Then load back config with secret seed saved (says to do this if transferring boot drives). Unclear to me if then have to do something in the FreeNAS user interface to enable mirror and mirror the config file over, or if it just works at this point because the mirror was set up during install?
or
2. A blog post does it differently. It clean installs to one of the ssds, reboots, copies the config over, and then mirrors. This seems possibly easier, but no mention if this gets you the 16 gb swap.

I see no way to simply copy over to the ssds and get the full size of the drives. Everything says the ssd partitions will be the same size as the thumb drive, which would be a waste of ssd space.

So, please advise, which was is preferred? Or is there a different third way?

By the way, for the manual writers, the manual says the iso can be burned to CD. For me, it no longer fits on a CD, so I had to burn it to DVD.
Thanks for the advice!
Best, respectfully
IMF

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

You might find this helpful:

Resetting network configuration is the only way

once i tried to upgrade to 11.3 i started having other issues What are you booting from? If that's a USB stick, you are likely to face an issue where these sticks cannot handle the stress that FreeNAS puts them under. Worse with USB3 running at USB3 speed. Recommended boot media is either...

www.ixsystems.com

 

[doglover]

Hello Pat. Thanks for the interesting reading. So now there is a third option.
Persisting questions for the group.
1. Is the 16 GB swap file created by the method in the manual a desirable thing? Option 1 (the manual) creates this but the others don't.
2. Of the two options I picked, which is preferred?
3. Of the three options now including the one above, which is preferred?
Thanks very much,
Best
IMF

 

[Constantin]

Here is what I did: Create a pool with one of the new drives. Once the transfer / mirror is complete, remove the original USB stick from the pool. Then add the second SSD to the pool. Done.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

1. I would not create swap space on the boot pool but on data disks.
2. My name is not Pat.

 

[Constantin]

I agree re: swap space. My name isn’t pat either. :)

i wouldn’t use the boot SSDs for anything but boot. L2ARC, SLOG, or special VDEVs deserve their own, dedicated drives unless you like living dangerously.

 

[HoneyBadger]

I would be fine with using boot SSDs (or HDDs) for swap devices, as you shouldn't be making routine use of swap in a well-tuned configuration anyways. It's there as an emergency pressure-relief valve (with a secondary purpose of being a cushion against slightly mismatched drives on your vdevs) - not as "extra RAM."

Agreed on not using them for L2ARC/SLOG/special - and if you're using USB flash boot devices still, definitely don't put swap there.

 

[doglover]

Hi all. Thanks for the interesting discussion. While waiting for responses, I followed the official documentation exactly and did a clean install from USB (burned using linux and dd per the manual) using dual 120 GB ssd drives, which created the 16 GB swap partition. At least I think it did; I will need to learn how to check; I know how in linux but not FreeBSD. I did get some interesting messages during install about creating and destroying partitions that might relate to the swap but I think in the end it worked. I then loaded the config file, rebooted, ran an upgrade to U3.2, and everything seems to work fine. Feel lucky that it worked, and glad to be back in business. To be honest, I'm not sure how to reconcile the seeming wide disagreement between the official manual and the forum, but maybe it's just that there are many ways to accomplish the same good outcome.
So much faster now, which will likely surprise nobody but still wonderful. An upgrade that would take 1.5 hours or more on the USB thumb drive now takes about 10 minutes with SSD. Booting up used to take around 5-6 minutes in 11.1 and 12 minutes with 11.3 now is about 1 minute or so.
Reminder to manual writers that the iso no longer fits on a CD. Thanks all, stay safe and healthy.
IMF

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

swapinfo
gmirror status
;)