Photo and video management like iPhoto

[Robert76]

I am advised by several sources within the FreeNAS community that Bhyve is not reliable at running Windows VM's.

could you please point me to these sources of information? interesting.... and would be happy to look at it as installing Windows VM on bhyve is one of my next goals....

 

[areis]

The first thing you should consider is Digital Asset Management software like Adobe Lightroom or Apple Photos.

https://photography.tutsplus.com/tu...e-for-your-digital-picture-archive--cms-24356

I still use Apple Aperture. Managing thousands of photos can become overwhelming very quickly. The DAM provides a comprehensive way to manage them.

If you are using Apple Photos, you can import your photos from the FreeNAS share as referenced files. That means the actual photo files remain on the FreeNAS share and the Photos app refers to them rather than copying them into the Photos folder.

https://support.apple.com/guide/photos/change-where-photos-stores-photos-and-videos-pht1ed9b966d/mac

Plex can also point to (reference) the same FreeNAS share and provide another interface in which to view your media.

Keep all your photos, movies, etc. in a single FreeNAS share and have your various software tools refer to those files rather having several copies of the same media in different places.

 

[areis]

I use Aperture and my typical workflow involves importing photos into a managed Aperture library on my iMac (which is backed up via time machine), but I also save a backup copy (you can do this in the import settings in Aperture) to my home folder in the users dataset (Users/username/Pictures/Year/Month/Day) on my FreeNAS server.

When I use Aperture on my MacBook Pro I use a referenced library that connects to the users dataset (Users/username/Pictures/Year/Month/Day) on the FreeNAS server via VPN while I am on the road. This way I have access to the backup Master images that I have imported on my iMac as stated above.

I run Plex in a jail and use the same dataset (Users/username/Pictures/Year/Month/Day) to serve up my photos via Plex Media Server if I want to.

Lastly, I create an Aperture Vault of my managed Aperture library (iMac) to a USB disk enclosure to be stored off site. I update this weekly.

It works flawlessly for me.

I'm sure you could do the same with Lightroom, but I am not familiar with that application.

Good luck.

 

[Evertb1]

could you please point me to these sources of information? interesting.... and would be happy to look at it as installing Windows VM on bhyve is one of my next goals....

See this thread with my ESXi discussion:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...-on-esxi-or-vms-in-freenas.58410/#post-423274

 

[Robert76]

ok, 2 folks saying that putting Windows on FreeNAS VM is not reliable, but at the same time neglect recommendation from Freenas to not virtualize Freenas and basically have not given any arguments or examples of potential issues with Windows on FreeNAS VM...

I do not want you to change your way, but for me it is rather not well justified to go for esxi.... without giving a chance to FreeNAS....

 

[Evertb1]

ok, 2 folks saying that putting Windows on FreeNAS VM is not reliable, but at the same time neglect recommendation from Freenas to not virtualize Freenas and basically have not given any arguments or examples of potential issues with Windows on FreeNAS VM...

I do not want you to change your way, but for me it is rather not well justified to go for esxi.... without giving a chance to FreeNAS....

To each his own. If you do a search on the Forum or on the WWW you will find a lot of discussions on this subject with successes and failures. Enough to make me wonder. Combined with the answers of some experienced members that is enough for me.

There are a sufficient number of experienced forum members with succesfull virtualization of FreeNAS on ESXi. And I have done a lot of reading on this subject. Enough to make up my mind. Taking note of the recommandations (as I did) and then doing something else is not exactly the same as neglecting them. It is not hard to find out why virtualization of FreeNAS is not recommanded and you can certainly do something about the reasons. Such as taking care that FreeNAS keeps control over the HBA and some other things.

What I haven't done is starting extensive experimenting with VM's on Freenas. I don't see the need and I don't want to take the time.

 

[Xelas]

FreeNAS can be virtualized very well and reliably IF the hardware fully supports VT-d (CPU, chipset, etc) and run the pool through a dedicated HBA (set to IT mode) in pass-through mode, allowing FreeNAS full control over the storage drives. You must also dedicate enough RAM for FreeNAS to work well. One major advantage of this approach is that you can then also run other hardware (such as dedicated graphics cards, some sound cards, etc) in pass-through mode as well, as give your VMs full access to specific hardware.

Here is my config:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...-on-esxi-or-vms-in-freenas.58410/#post-423493

 

[nightshade00013]

There are a ton of different ways to virtualize windows, you could run a windows vm on your desktop and have FreeNAS store the image if you really wanted to. Some ways I would say have better functionality than others. I have honestly thought about building out a gaming computer and virtualizing not only Windows but FreeNAS on the same box. Getting a bunch of very fast but small disks and having them passed to FreeNAS but they would all hold the data for the windows VM. So say I want to put together a bunch of SSD's and use them in a raidZ3 so I can have something very fast, fairly cheap without the worry of data loss since I can have the pool snapshot to a large HDD nightly. Using something like ESXI would also allow me to pass a video card over to windows and the internal connection to FreeNAS would be VERY fast.

Doing the same type of thing directly under FreeNAS using Bhyve however would be a major pain. I don't even think I could pass through the video cards to the windows VM.

You are welcome to do whatever you want however you want but why try and reinvent the wheel? It goes along the same lines as the hardware recommendations, they are tested and known to work correctly. While you can go outside of them and have a build that works you will often see more people come through with hardware that is not recommended and need help than those who follow the guidelines.