It is common to run the operating system on a simple USB flash drive for a FreeNAS/TrueNAS machine. The biggest advantage of using a USB as the boot device is saving an additional SATA port for more shared storage, not to mention much cheaper price.
Some users may concern about the lifespan of a USB drive, compared to a more durable and faster SSD. In fact, FreeNAS makes it rather easy to restore replace and recover existing ZFS pool (zpool) with a fresh new installation media. But for people do not want to have any downtime for their NAS, you can mirror the boot devices for added data safety.
Procedures
To create a mirrored boot pool, you will need an additional USB flash drive plugged into the FreeNAS machine, same size or larger than the existing one. I would suggest having identical model of the two USB drives, if you want the upmost compatibility.
In the FreeNAS UI, you can first confirm that the system has detected the new USB drive by navigating to “Storage” -> “Disk”. Removable media is usually marked as “daX”, which is da1 in our case.
Visit the “System” -> “Boot” section.
Click the “ACTIONS” dropdown menu, and select “Boot Pool Status”.
When the boot pool is not mirrored, you should see only one drive under freenas-boot zpool.
Click the vertical ellipsis menu button (⋮) and choose “Attach”.
Pick the new USB flash drive as the member disk (e.g. da1).
Tick “Use all disk space” and save.
You will have to wait a couple minutes for the OS to attach the USB drive. A pop up will appear, when it is done. After that, a new mirror tab with the two devices will be shown under freenas-boot zpool.
It will take about 5 to 10 minutes for the new USB flash drive to resilver with the data. A notification will alert you about the degrading boot pool, which is normal and will disappear after resilvering.
This is a simple way to increase the safety for the boot devices of your FreeNAS machine, without going for a SSD. The system will notify you, if it detects a degraded USB. At that moment, you can just replace the faulty USB drive and resliver the boot pool.
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AMD finally provides the world with more information about the much-anticipated next generation Ryzen 5000 series processors. AMD decides to skip the “Ryzen 4000” name to prevent confusions with the older Zen 2-based laptop processors.
The new CPUs are the first to be equipped with latest Zen 3 micro-architecture, which will be on the same TSMC 7 nm fabrication node. Compared to previous Zen 2, Zen 3 is able to offer a higher maximum boost clock, about 19% better Instructions Per Clock/Cycle (IPC) and improved power efficiency.
Screen Capture from AMD
The Zen 3 architecture also features a completely different Core Complex (CCX) and cache layout. The eight CPU cores inside a CCX can access the one large L3 cache, without using the Infinity Fabric across separate cache locations. This can dramatically reduce memory latency, while basically doubling the size of the cache for each core.
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AMD will be releasing a total of four Ryzen 5000 series processors on 5th November. The Ryzen 9 5950X is the most powerful one with 16 cores, 32 threads and can boost up to 4.9 GHz. They are fully compatible with existing and future 500 series motherboards, with X570 and B550 chipsets.
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Along with the WD_BLACK SN850, Western Digital also introduces a new PCIe 3.0 SSD Add-in Card (AIC), named the AN1500. For those who does now have a Gen 4-capable system, it may be a great option to obtain insanely fast storage.
The WD_BLACK AN1500 is an AIC with two internal NVMe SSDs in RAID 0 mode, using the Marvell 88NR2241 RAID controller. Wired to a PCIe 3.0×8 interface, the drive can reach maximum sequential read/write speeds at 6500 MB/s and 4100 MB/s. Western Digital does not disclose what model of SSDs is put into the AIC.
The exterior enclosure doubles as a passive heatsink to cool the SSDs inside. It also has customizable RGB lighting at the top. The AN1500 is available in three capacities, 1 TB to 4 TB, and are priced at $299.99 USD, $549.99 USD and $999.99 USD (MSRP) respectively. All models are given a 5-year warranty, without detailed endurance rating (TBW).
You can purchase the AN1500 SSD now on major local/online retailers and the Western Digital Store.
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