I am using FreeNAS for about 5 years and I am quite happy with it. But I want to consolidate a bit and I am not sure what is the best option.
I have 3 older and weaker PC's doing FreeNAS and Hyper-V; the FreeNAS box had 5 disks in raidz. All the FreeNAS data is personal, except for a backup of a couple of VM's used for work.
I want to put everything in a single computer to do both and move it (and the UPS) to the basement to free up my work area, get rid of lots of noise and heat. I need to use Windows & Hyper-V for several reasons related to work and licensing, so I am considering:
1. Use Hyper-V and some separate storage (M.2) to boot and keep the VM's and build a FreeNAS VM to manage the existing disks. I am concerned about 2 things:
a) I have no PCIe controller, in the current box the disks are connected to the integrated SATA ports from the chipset on the motherboard (old Intel platform). Will it FreeNAS properly? Current disks are physical, in the VM with no PCI pass-thru ... ?
b) What are there risks related to migrating FreeNAS to a VM? I will take a backup of the most important data I have, but I have no easy way to take a backup of everything.
2. User Hyper-V, virtualize FreeNAS, use the FreeNAS storage for the rest of the VM's. Is it realistic and wise? I expect to loose a lot of performance (versus nVME) and gain redundancy (the nVME storage has backups, today on FreeNAS, but no redundancy).
3. Use Hyper-V, wipe the FreeNAS disks, create a Windows RAID5 array, copy everything back, stay on Windows. Not a fan of this option, but I seriously consider it as a simpler option at the end of the day. I will have to find a way to back up the existing data, it is difficult but not impossible.
I am cooking this for a while, I already have the new computer for the new setup (Ryzen 2700, 32 GB of RAM, another 32 GB if needed, a 500GB nVME SSD) and I plan to do the switch next weekend. I am missing the information to decide between the 3 options, I would prefer the first one if possible but I will go with any.
I have 3 older and weaker PC's doing FreeNAS and Hyper-V; the FreeNAS box had 5 disks in raidz. All the FreeNAS data is personal, except for a backup of a couple of VM's used for work.
I want to put everything in a single computer to do both and move it (and the UPS) to the basement to free up my work area, get rid of lots of noise and heat. I need to use Windows & Hyper-V for several reasons related to work and licensing, so I am considering:
1. Use Hyper-V and some separate storage (M.2) to boot and keep the VM's and build a FreeNAS VM to manage the existing disks. I am concerned about 2 things:
a) I have no PCIe controller, in the current box the disks are connected to the integrated SATA ports from the chipset on the motherboard (old Intel platform). Will it FreeNAS properly? Current disks are physical, in the VM with no PCI pass-thru ... ?
b) What are there risks related to migrating FreeNAS to a VM? I will take a backup of the most important data I have, but I have no easy way to take a backup of everything.
2. User Hyper-V, virtualize FreeNAS, use the FreeNAS storage for the rest of the VM's. Is it realistic and wise? I expect to loose a lot of performance (versus nVME) and gain redundancy (the nVME storage has backups, today on FreeNAS, but no redundancy).
3. Use Hyper-V, wipe the FreeNAS disks, create a Windows RAID5 array, copy everything back, stay on Windows. Not a fan of this option, but I seriously consider it as a simpler option at the end of the day. I will have to find a way to back up the existing data, it is difficult but not impossible.
I am cooking this for a while, I already have the new computer for the new setup (Ryzen 2700, 32 GB of RAM, another 32 GB if needed, a 500GB nVME SSD) and I plan to do the switch next weekend. I am missing the information to decide between the 3 options, I would prefer the first one if possible but I will go with any.