Thanks for the reminder to export my config! It's been a while since I last exported it. Actually had to allow the app to be downloaded, Windows Security kept flagging it.

SATA SSDs are so cheap now that I just buy a pair of 256-512GB drives and make the boot pool a mirror. But it's good to know this is so straightforward. Thanks Tom.

Great video! I see this question asked at least weekly on the forums/reddit. One additional step I take is to add a nightly cron job that exports the config, and then I copy that off to another system for safe keeping. Config changes don’t happen that often, and are well documented, but it’s nice to not have to remember to re-export the configs every day that I do have changes.

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

2 ай бұрын

That's a good idea!

@tariq4846

Ай бұрын

How to do this? I am newbie

I've had 2 nvme drives fail the exact same way. Very annoying that they die like that with no warning and it's the reason Im rebuildingmy homelab servers to have redundant boot drives. It is good that Truenas is fairly painless to recover so long as your config is backed up.

@wildmanjeff42

2 ай бұрын

nothing is made with quality as it was even a few years ago. I have lost 2 SSDs in the past 5 years.

My experience with consumer NVME in my desktops made me not trust them at all and sure as hell never use them for boot drives in a server. Dual consumer SATA SSD is a far better choice, you don't need NVME speeds on TrueNAS for boot anyway. I've been running consumer SSDs as boot drives in all my servers for almost 10 years with no issues, in that time I've had 2 die. SSDs usually don't give any indication there gonna die, sometimes they do like causing crashes but in my experience one day there working, next there dead. If people really want NVME boot then something like the Micron 7400 PRO is a much better choice and the 480GB costs stuff all.

Such a helpful how-to on TrueNas recovery readiness. You are a gold mine!

Nice, needed that info simple and easy. I'll be soon moving my drives into a new NAS-type enclosure because my old desktop isn't cutting it anymore, and this answers how to do it if I can't (and probably won't) use the SATA TrueNAS is currently in.

One more time great video, u are the best!!!

Perfect timing. My boot usb drive is failing. Thanks!

The best would be that the you could automate this config with keys export to preferred safe location with encryption.

@Techintx

2 ай бұрын

You can: settings>advanced>cron jobs. The following will export your config and keys, then you can run some other process to copy it to another system: tar cf /mnt///`hostname -s`-`date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S`.tar -C /data/ freenas-v1.db pwenc_secret Replacing and with your preferred location.

Nice demo video. One thing I'd like to know is - how did the original disk fail and how did it present? I ask because I noticed the pool showed in an exported state. I am not a ZFS expert, but I thought exporting a pool took manual effort (or at least, done explicitly by the OS). Did the drive fail but the system was still running enough for you to gracefully export the pool or shutdown the system? Or was this catastrophic?

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

2 ай бұрын

Nope, it did not fail graceful and exported is what TrueNAS shows when it can see a pool that has not been previously imported.

Does truecommand backup these configs and keys when you manage a truenas?

Is there a command line option to export the config? Possibly via Ansible? I'm hoping to automate this process. Is the config restorable from a remote resource like S3?

That looks quite similar to my system. I have 3 of the 4Bay components in mine.

I recently had to upgrade one of my TrueNAS Core pools as it was at 79% usage. Replaced each one or four 8TB HDD with a 12TB at a time. After resilver process, on to the next drive. 4 days later all was well and I had more room. Now only 46% of space used.

@wildmanjeff42

2 ай бұрын

I need to do this , but unfortunately I have 8 drive Z2 arrays...

It’s nice how simple it is. Great video! I always backup the config as part of the update process. I keep the last 3 version. I store them on my NAS datapool but the 1st of every month take manual offline copies and store them in a safe location. Questions… 1) I started with freenas (truenas-core old school) running on a bootable USB stick, they were not great and seems risky so I moved to a spare WD raptor hdd instead (150gb 10k rpm sata1) much better and have no other use for these drives! Upgraded hardware last year and had to move from truenas-core to truenas-scale to support AMD AM5 correctly (advice from devs for modern hardware support). It warned during the update/migration that I should install on a SSD, is this really important or not? I don’t see the need for myself but I would consider an SSD/NVME for a log or other cache drive aiding hdds rather than waste that speed on just the OS boot drive. Or is worth moving anyway? 2) backups of the NAS config, any automated ways you would recommend / trust? (NAS to NAS? Cloud? USB? Or just manual do it?) 3) if you use an NVME drive for boot, is there a way to lock down say 20Gb for the OS and use anything spare for cache or other NAS services? (Can a mini pool be put on there? I ask because I see 1Tb drives cost about the same or less compared with 32-128gb drives!!! Feels wasteful.

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

2 ай бұрын

1) using a USB is currently not the way to do it, but HDD or SSD is fine 2) there are some ways to automate it you can find in the TrueNAS forums, I just do it manually 3) There is no officially support ways, but there are ways you can find in the TrueNAS forums.

Can you automate the config/key backups?

I've heard from other sources that many people consider ECC RAM to be "required" for ZFS. What are your thoughts on that, and are you running ECC RAM in your build?

I never imagined that a video would be necessary for something so simple and fundamental. That why teaching to beginners is an hard task.

I confess to having two identical m.2 drives in mirror on the motherboard.

Will this process also restore users/groups and NFS/samba shares including their permissions/ACLs? 🤔

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

2 ай бұрын

Users. groups and shares are all in the boot drive restore, the ACL & Permissions are on the datasets.

@rokyo401

2 ай бұрын

@@LAWRENCESYSTEMS Oh, that's even better! So, you could theoretically import the pools on a completely different machine that is not even running TrueNAS (but maybe just Debian with openZFS or the like) and still have all ACLs preserved? Of course, in that case you would need to re-create the users and groups on that system or ideally, have all that in an LDAP already. 🤔

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

2 ай бұрын

Yes, if the id's line up you can move the ZFS pool.

Any way to set up a recurring back up of the config file?

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

2 ай бұрын

There are no official ways, but it can be done.

@bloodrush545

2 ай бұрын

@@LAWRENCESYSTEMS Would you be able to do a video on it? That would be very helpful! Thanks again for the great content.

no backup - > no pity! ;)

Am I correct in remembering that TrueNAS (Scale I think but could be Core) duplicates the config to the data pool every night?

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

2 ай бұрын

It does not do this

@photon92

2 ай бұрын

@@LAWRENCESYSTEMS Oh, ok. Thanks for confirming.

Is truenas "eating" up the drives like proxmox does with extensive writing just running the system without much usage?

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

2 ай бұрын

Not at all

ok for some reason mine wont upload the file... urgghhh! .P.s. I imported the drive before doing that, could that be why? my apps arent showing and all my user credentials are missing ... Such a tough nut

Speaking of lost keys. What I do with dead NVME drives and processors is drill them in the corner and use them as keychains.

Cheap nvmes are expensive......

this is the main reason when i see people say redundant drive for truenas i scoff at the thought of wasting drive slot for redundant drive when as long as you periodically export the config file you are golden. It would be different if you where in a setting where you had no access to your truenas system then redundant is cool and all but for most home users it is not necessary. Unless you are using your boot drive for storing apps then you might want to consider it but i use different pool of for that and it is redundant.