Add "Manual Selection" when adding vdev to zpool

Feature Requests
,
1

When using TrueNAS’s web interface to create a zpool, it gives you a way to manually select which drives to use by their /dev/sd* name. Sadly, you don’t also get the serial number, so you have to manually do a reverse lookup. That part sucks.

The manual selection feature isn’t available when adding to your existing zpool, and this is where it gets difficult. More than once, I’ve had extra hotspares in there (not in a pool for a reason) that end up getting sucked into the wrong vdev because of this “I can’t choose the drives” situation.

There are reasons you wanna manually select drives:

  1. Some drives aren’t in as good a shape as others. They can be great temporary hotspares, but you might not trust them as part of a vdev with your data.
  2. You might wanna assign drives of a certain make or model to the same vdev or zpool. When TrueNAS chooses for you, it’ll mix 'n match so long as the capacities are the same even if that wasn’t your intention.
  3. Sometimes, drives are arranged in the chassis based on how easy they are to find when an issue occurs. I’ve arranged mine to maximize the amount of expander cards used for each vdev so they’re all in the same chassis. Sadly, I can’t do this if TrueNAS chooses the drives for me because it will spread them out all over various chassis and connections regardless of my intended configuration.
2 Likes
2

This actually sounds like a very reasonable change to the TrueNAS GUI. Do I capture the requested changes correctly below?

  • During ANY Manual Selection, list the drive serial number (OU812) along with the drive ID (sda) so the user may select a drive based on serial number vice only drive ID.
  • Add a Manual Selection option when adding drives to an existing vDEV.

The first item sounds like a very easy change to make from a programming perspective, just add the serial number beside the drive ID.

The second item sounds more involved than just adding a GUI as there must be some logic to interface to the new GUI, but not terribly involved.

With that said, you got my vote, even though it is a feature I would never expect myself to use I still see it’s value.

1 Like
3

Correct! Thank you so much :slight_smile:. Those are exactly the requirements!