Having installed and completed the initial configuration of TrueNAS Scale next we need to consider storage. For a discussion of the various RAIDZ and mirrors, I would recommend this post. I have the following storage devices in my system:
sdl and sdj are used as the boot pool so they cannot be used for anything else. sda/b/c/d/e/f/g are HDDs, mostly 3.64 TiB with one 5.46 TiB, so could be used for the main data pool. Then we have nvme0n1 and nvme1n1 these will be the fastest devices and will be used as a mirror for Apps and Virtualisation. sdk and sdm will give me another mirror for the Apps data. This will leave sdh and sdi as one 223 GiB mirror for future use. For my main data pool, I will use RAIDZ3, which gives me the potential for 3 disk failures before data loss.
Select Storage, and if you have no pools configured, you will be prompted to Create Pool. Click the button. Give the pool a name. I will use the original name “data“. Click Next.
Select the Layout (in my case, RAIDZ3) and Disk Size. I am using the 3.64 TiB disks as a minimum to include the larger disk. Width (the number of disks 7) and Number of VDEVs in this case 1.
As I do not require any of the other options, click Save and Go To Review followed by Create Pool and confirm that all disks will be erased.
Once complete, you will be taken to the Storage dashboard. I want to continue and create two further pools, apps on nvme0n1 and nvme1n1 and appdata on sdk and sdm.
So, for the apps pool, I want to add the disks manually. As before, select Storage > Create Pool and give the pool a name, then click Next.
Select the layout Mirror and then click Manual Disk Selection.
Now, click Add and drag and drop the disks from the left-hand side to the new VDEV.
Add as many storage devices as you require. Then click Save Selection.
As before, click Save And Go To Review.
Click Create Pool and Confirm.
Finally, I’ll create the third pool, appdata, on sdk and sdm — a mirror for persistent app data. With all three pools in place (data, apps, and appdata), the storage foundation is complete. Next, we’ll look at the initial configuration of TrueNAS Scale Apps, where these pools will be put to use.
