Are my apps on my system drive?

Apps and Virtualization
1

Hi,
when I ssh into my truenas and go to /mnt I see
/.ix-apps
/myPool1
/myOtherPool

My question is simple - does this mean that the apps are actually on my system SSD rather than on my other pool drives? How do I know/check otherwise?

Also in the .ix-apps I see /docker, does it mean that my apps are ran also from the system SSD?

Thank you

2

zfs list tells you where each dataset is located and where it is mounted.

In ZFS pool or dataset path/name and mount point are decoupled.

By default TrueNAS does not run anything but the system proper from the boot pool.

1 Like
3

No, they are not. They’re on whatever pool you’ve told TrueNAS to put them on.

1 Like
4

Thank you! zfs list clarified this for me :+1:

5

I actually didn’t put them anywhere myself. I just started using it as it was after initial setup. But thanks to the command above, I now see its actually on the slow pool.

6

You must have in order for the apps service to be running. That’s what the “Choose Pool” menu option does.

7

It is on one of the pools. Back when I was starting I had only one pool (and system pool) so maybe it automatically preselected. Do you know, if I switch pool, are the apps moved?
Thank you

8

I believe they are, but I’m not certain.

9

I see, thank you, I will backup what I can and try it :slight_smile:

10

They are not. If I switch, they stay on the original pool. I can switch back and they are still there, so at least they were not deleted :grinning:

11

Thanks for confirming.

1 Like
12

For completeness here is a tutorial on how to move the apps: HOWTO: Copy the hidden ix-apps dataset from one pool to another

13

Imagine ZFS storage like RAM memory. Suppose you have 4 memory modules of 4 GB each. All you can see is 16GB of RAM and you absolutely don’t care which of them contains what.
ZFS treats the storage in the similar way - similar, in the way that it offers entire available space without need to know which particular file is on which particular physical drive. Furthermore, it has additional mechanisms to handle cases when a drive fails, but this is another topic.

14

Thank you, even though this is not what I was looking for (I needed to distinguish pools, not drives) it is a pretty nice and simple explanation of ZFS to me (I am still new to this).