a12lJun 3, 2025

Hi @jimsalter! Do you recommend storing the OS for a NAS on a separate drive from the NAS' storage?

I'll be using FreeBSD with ZFS on an old Dell Poweredge T330. Got two 12TB IronWolfs and a couple spare 2.5" SSDs.

The only thing I would need to purchase to get this to work would be a hot swappable caddie with an adapter for 2.5" drives.

I'm thinking that by having the OS on a separate drive you lower the risk of something messing up the OS also messing up your data. While I'll keep backups of the important parts (ofc), it still takes a couple of hours to restore data over internet.

But maybe it's more hassle/not worth the money?

Show threadJim SalterJun 3, 2025

@a12l absolutely not worth it, ESPECIALLY on FreeBSD where it's incredibly easy to just run the entire thing from a single zpool. Do that.

There are specialty workloads where you might want to isolate the IOPS demands of the OS from those of the application workload. But you don't got one of those. So make your life easier, use the same pool, just make sure you intelligently use datasets to organize things!

And don't forget the backup. It's always mandatory. 🍻🤠👍

Show threada12lJun 3, 2025

@jimsalter Thank you so much for your reply!

Do you have a guide for how to setup a NAS for a home(lab) setup? First time doing this, but want to get to know FreeBSD so I'm not interested in zVault.

Do you have a standard template for how to setup datasets to organize files? Asked on the FreeBSD Discord, and got the suggestion to keep it out of hier(7), because hier isn't really suitable for the NAS usecase.

Show threadJim Salter

@a12l on literally any machine I run, I have a dataset named "data" that is the parent of any and all application level workloads. Executable applications don't go in there--only the data they create.

VMs? `[poolname]/data/images/[vmname]`
Network shares configured in Samba? `[poolname]/data/smbshare`
Legal backups of legally licensed movie data? `[poolname]/data/smbshare/movies`

You get the idea.

Jun 3, 2025 at 3:20pmWeb
Show threada12lJun 3, 2025

@jimsalter Thanks for the tip! Something maybe I should adopt to.

EDIT:

> Legal backups of legally licensed movie data? `[poolname]/data/smbshare/movies`

Don't you mean your watchable Linux ISOs? ;)

Show threadJim SalterJun 3, 2025
@a12l no, those are different, those go under `data/images/iso` so they get backed up along with the viewable Linux virtual machines I installed from them. 🙃
Show threada12lJun 3, 2025
@jimsalter Do you only use SMB for file share, or you also use NFS? My clients will mostly be FreeBSD, but my girlfriend's old MacOS machine need to easily connect to the NAS.
Show threadJim SalterJun 3, 2025
@a12l I'm actually almost exclusively using SSHFS these days in my own home environment, but have never seen the need to change the "smbshare" name on the dataset on the box what holds all the goodies.