Problem/Justification
When installing TrueNAS on a SSD with a lot of storage the whole SSD cann’t be used for anything else. It would be nice to be able to use the rest of the SSD for atleased something like a L2ARC or as a seperate pool for not important data.
Impact
TrueNAS would only create a small 32GB partition on the selected device, the rest would be useable by the user.
User Story
Here are some posts talking about this and even a workaround people used to install TrueNAS only on a Partiton:
I have to agree, it would be nice to have a function like that. Just kidding!
I couldn’t imagine how problematic that would be when updating or reinstalling TrueNAS. There are guides on how to manually perform this function however us hard core TrueNAS (or any corporate environment) people believe that a boot device has one purpose, not multiple. It makes troubleshooting problems much easier.
Imagine Joe Schmuck Jr. created a pool on this extra partition and temporarily put some important data on it, like Joe Schmuck Sr. Netflix password (that is so damn long and complex no one could remember it) and then the boot drive fails due to some software upgrade. Well crap, now Joe Sr. has to reset his Netflix password on all 53 devices he was illegally sharing with. (I wish)
Anyway, anyone who wants to do this manually is taking a risk and I don’t feel it is a good feature as well. I highly doubt iXsystems would do this, it does not make sense in a corporate environment. They did do one thing to address all that “wasted” space, you can create a SWAP file on the drive. That is a good use of that extra space and it should not wear your boot drive down. The Rub (why it should not wear out your boot drive) : If you build your system properly, you should never need to use SWAP space.
So while I would like to support all users on the forum, I have to vote no on this feature request. Please don’t take offence, you tried to make a contribution but we have been down this road before, it isn’t a pretty sight.
All fine, I just thought about everything that bugged me when first installing TrueNAS and made feature requests for them. I didn’t know about the statement that @SmallBarky replied earlier.
Just kidding!
All fine, I just thought about everything that bugged me when first installing TrueNAS and made feature requests for them. I didn’t know about the statement that