I think this would make the best compromise to benefit everyone:
- TrueNAS defaults to creating a new checkpoint once per week
- Can be changed to a user’s preference (once per day, once per month, twice a week, …)
- Can be disabled for a pool
- There will still be a button to manage, view, delete, and create a pool’s checkpoint
Here’s the rationale behind this:
You don’t want to set its lifespan too long, since after a good amount of time has passed, rewinding back to a checkpoint loses some of its practicality.
You don’t want to set its lifespan too short, since there’s the possibility of it getting “replaced” by the time a user decides to rewind their pool after an emergency or disaster. (Let’s say you only set its lifespan for “one day”. That means a new checkpoint replaces the old one every day. In the real-world example that I linked, the user’s checkpoint might unfortunately be replaced the next day, before they had a chance to use it for their emergency rewind. A default lifespan of one week increases their chances of a “pre-disaster” checkpoint existing.)
Finally, this would only be the default. (A new checkpoint every week.) The user can still change this to a different frequency, or even just disable the “auto checkpoint” feature.
Whether or not a user opts for the “auto checkpoint” feature, they can still manually manage it via a button in the pool’s page.