¶ Overview
TrueNAS (Originally known as TrueNAS Scale) is primarily a storage focused operating system. With ZFS as the underlying filesystem it adds additional features on top of the standard RAID arrays. For example; with a normal RAID 5 you are able to lose a single disk without losing data. With a RAIDz1 you can still withstand the lose of one drive without data lose, but you also get the benefit of ZSF scrubs. ZFS occasionally scrubs the pool for any errors and automatically correct those errors.
¶ Installation
TrueNAS has a very straight forwards installation process. You boot from the ISO and then choose what disk you want to install TrueNAS on. You can also chose multiple drives for redundancy!
Somewhere in the install you will be asked whether you want to configure the admin password now or when you first access TrueNAS via the web interface. I usually do it from the web interface.
Once the install finishes you can choose to either reboot the server or shut it down. Rebooting just saves you having to manually turn it on again. After the server reboots or you turn it on again you should be able to access it by going to the IP listed on the monitor if you have one connected, for example http://192.168.0.15
If you did not set the admin password in the install you will be prompted to set it once you access the web interface. The admin will always be
truenas_admin.
¶ Setup
Setting up TrueNAS can be a daunting task depending on what you want to do. For my server I have a healthy mixture of Docker apps with NFS and SMB shares.
¶ Create a Storage Pool
Once you log into TrueNAS you will be dropped at the Dashboard section. On the lefthand side you will see a list of sections you can go to. For this section click on the Storage tab. Then in the top right of the window you should see an option Create Pool, click that and you will be brought to a wizard that will guide you through everything.
The only important things in the wizard are the name of the pool, and the data.
- In the date section you will have a lot of choices for the layout. The easiest way to remember is the number of the RAIDZ is the amount of drives you can lose without losing data. Depending on how many drives you have you may not want to sacrifice more than one in favor of storage space.
- In the Automateed Disk Selection you can choose the size of the disks along with the amount you want to use in the pool. The number of VDEVs further divides the pool. For example, if you have 8 2TB hard drives and you want to use all of them you would set
Disk Sizeto 2TB and theWidthto 8. If you want to further split the 8 drives into 2 groups of 4 that can lose a single drive each then you would set theVDEVsvalue to 2, otherwise you can just leave it at 1.
While there are other options for the drive layouts, It's best to stick with RAIDZ unless you know what you're doing.
Once you have everything set you can look at the right side which will give you an overview of what the resulting pool will look like. If you like the configuration you can click the Save And Go To Review button then click the Create Pool button to create your pool.
¶ Optional Settings
There are some additional settings you can configure for you pool even after it has been created.
Log: Dedicated disk(s) that will be used to store logsSpare: Disk(s) that are in the machine but not part of a pool. Can be used as a hot spare in case a drive in the pool dies.Cache: Dedicated disk(s) that will be used to cache data so it can be accessed faster.Metadata: Dedicated disk(s) that will store metadata (The location of files on the pool) so they can be accessed faster.Dedup: Dedicated disk(s) that will be used to remove duplicate data from the pool.
¶ Create a Dataset
On the lefthand side click on the Datasets tab. You should be brought to a page where you can see the name of the pool you just created along with details about it.
The easiest way to think of a Dataset is a folder you can manage through TrueNAS. This also includes some additional features such as Data Protection and replication along with permission controls.
The difference between a Dataset and a Zvol is a Zvol is more like a virtual disk than a folder. So if you were to create a virtual machine the disk used to store the data would be considered a Zvol.
To create a new Dataset make sure your pool is selected and click on the Add Dataset
