Most usb sticks do not have wear leveling and definitely don't have static wear leveling (which is what you want). That said, I am having very good luck with the openmediavault-flashmemory plugin on my systems. If this plugin is used, I would say use the usb stick. You will need the 3.16 backports kernel for usb 3.0 but it should boot fine.
The data for the plugins is on the data drives. So, the OS drive type won't make much of a difference. ssd would be more trustworthy though.
Ah cool, well that's OK then. 
I have two identical Sandisk sticks, so I can easily take a backup of the boot drive.
Edit: I just decommissioned a FreeNAS box today. It's one of the first HP Microservers, and it's been booting off an old 2GB no-name USB stick and it's been perfectly fine for a little under 7 years. OK, it's only rebooted once or twice a year, usually when they're doing the electrical testing, but still, it's a long time for a crappy USB stick.
Freenas is based on FreeBSD, OMV on Debian. Debian does a lot more read and write what kills your USB-Stick much faster. However you can try the flashmemory plugin aaron already mentioned.
Hi Domr,
ever thought about a USB stick with SLC memory cells? They are much more durable then usual USB drives.
I've been looking into USB boot drives, as the motherboard for my next install has only two SATA ports (long story). As @ryecoaaron mentions, I found most USB flash drives either didn't support wear leveling or manufacturers don't address it at all in their documentation.
I found some, like the Sandisk Cruzer Extreme, are now based on SATA SSD controllers mated to a SATA to USB bridge. In the case of the Sandisk, its the same Phison 9 controller in one of the Sandisk SSDs I have booting a desktop machine. In effect, its an SSD in a USB Flash drive package. Because of the speed "bottleneck" presented by the USB bridge and the size of the housing, Sandisk uses a slower, single, flash memory chip. But in all other respects, its an SSD with both TRIM and SMART support.
There's several brands that offer this, I only mention Sandisk as that was the OP's brand,
Probably still not a preferred alternative to a drive on a SATA port, but perhaps a viable alternative in specific cases where SATA ports are in short supply.
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