PART 1: WHY A ESXi SERVER? I have a personal preference for virtualization and it started a long time ago while using VMWare Workstation, it was easy to operate on my Windoze computer and I'm accustom to it. While this thread is mainly how to select the right components and put together a...

So this conversation started in another thread and I didn't feel like we should be taking over that thread so another one has been created. Basically come here to see what others have been doing with testing ESXi 7.0 noting any new limitations, changes, enhancements, or concerns/complements...

Hello, I have a gap in my understanding but i am not a complete newb to this. I have already built and run perfectly a FreeNAS AIO in ESXi on a Supermicro Xeon-D. My question, however, relates to a Dell r720xd that i purchased from eBay, and the H310 mini card that i purchased pre-flashed to...

Hello everybody, I run a FreeNAS VM on an ESXi host version 6.7.0. (HPE Microserver GEN10 X3421 with 32GB RAM). The host boots from a USB stick. The VM runs on a NVMe SSD with 512GB. The Freenas VM is supported by 16GB Ram. Freenas uses a Raid 01 storage array of 4 x 4TB hard drives via the...

Hi, We are running FreeNAS 11.2-RELEASE-U1 for quite a while. We have an ESX is running VMs over a lun that is located on the FreeNAS, connected over ISCSI. Lately, it seems like we have reached some bottleneck in our storage system, causing our VMware VMs to run very slowly. We tried to...

Hello All, I recently migrated a pair of zvol’s from one FreeNAS machine to another. I have copied the iSCSI configuration screens side by side to ensure they are correct. At this time it appears I am able to connect and establish the iSCSI path but no devices will pass through. My intent is to...

Hi, I've decided to move my FreeNAS setup to a SuperMicro X11SDV-4C-TP8F. My goal is: - Boot from ESXi via an M.2 SSD or SATA DOM, perhaps even having most VM's stored here as well; - Passthrough the SATA disks from the on-board connectors to FreeNAS - Passthrough other disks to additional...

Hi, I'm considering to move my FreeNAS to a bit more modern setup. It's a home file server, no need for fancy video transcoding or things of this sort. I've read a lot on this forum and elsewhere on the caveats of installing FreeNAS as a VM. I believe the main advice was to use a HBA in order...

I have had for a while now an install of FreeNAS 11.2 (most recently U4) on a re-purposed Intel i7 4970K with 16 GB of RAM, 3x mixed size WD Purple hard drives (started with what I have and will slowly increase drives to match size) in Raid Z, 1x 1TB Purple hard drive stand-alone for misc...

Hi Guys, So yesterday I moved all my VMs from a rubbish SAN over to FreeNAS, however, I've noticed that ESXi is showing that I've used 5TB of data where FreeNAS is showing 500GB data used. I know that compression is enabled on the Zpool however, I didn't expect it to be as good as 10x...

Hi all, Before we start, hereby the system I am running: - Intel I7 - 4x 4GB RAM - Asrock-z77-extreme4 motherboard - 240GB SSD (NEW) - 4x 2TB HDD (NEW) ESXi 6.7 is running on a 32GB USB-stick and FreeNAS 11.2-stable is installed on the 240GB SSD. I got the 4x 2TB HDD connected to FreeNAS with...

Hello there, This is my first topic after the self introduction one. I wish I can have some advice from you communauts on the build I am planning. I currently have a VM host computer (still testing several hypervisors, should move to ESXi in the next days) that through an UnRAID VM provides...

I have an "All-in-One" (AiO) setup (details in my sig) like in this article referenced by many posts (like this) here on the forum. I am ashamed to admit that when I got everything going, I skipped the part about creating the virtual storage network (an additional virtual switch to handle the...

Hi, I am converting an R510 12 bay into storage for my environment, below is my plan of attack and was wondering if anyone could verify or tell me why it won't work? 1) Install ESXi ont a usb device using an internal header 2) Passthrough another USB stick and create a datastore to put the...

Hello, I have been using freenas last 6 months, so I am a little bit new still, I am not a big fan of bsd systems, just because already used to work on debian SOs, so I have been running VMs since then with byvhe. With this said, I am just mounting my datashares in my debian VMs with NFS and...

I have been using freenas for over a year now and it has been great but the one downside I am seeing is that I need to use a tonne of VMs for my lab and it is just too time consuming to create these in Bhyve as I usually have to install the stock OS and then install all the applications...

Hi Forums, Here is my hardware for FreeNAS: 2X Supermicro 4U Chassis ( 24Bay and external 45 Bay ) MB: Supermicro X10DRH-C/i CPU: 2X Xeon 2.4 Ghz 2460 v3 MEM: 256GB RAID: LSI 3108 MegaRAID 6.22.03.0 - FW 24.7.0.-0026 Drives: 1x: 32GB Sandisk USB 3.0 ( boot drive ) - hd0 4X: KINGSTON...

As I understand NAS storage are file based storage so I can't install ESXI hypervisor on it right? And if I can't install ESXI on it why some people use NAS storage attached to VMware. What is the best scenario to integrate VMware & FreeNAS?

In 11.1U6 if you expand a zvol that is presented as an iSCSI LUN, the new size is not reported until the iSCSI (ctld) service is restarted. Can anyone confirm if this is still the case for 11.2? I know I could test this in a VM but I'm lazy/busy/either.

Hello folks, Is there anyway to look at the contents of a zfs volume from within Freenas? Is there a way to mount a zvol from within freenas, if so can someone post the syntax, the normal Linux "mount -t ..." didn't seem to work, I have been through the zfs man pages a number of times and...

What are the FreeNAS/TrueNAS Best Practices for VMware Datastores? Current Draft Plan: 22 mirrored vdev Setup with 10TB Helium SAS drives (220TB usable before overhead, 44 total drives) Running on Dual Xeon 10 Core CPUs with 256GB RAM and a P4800X ZIL and dual 40GBE. 12 x VMware ESXI 6.7 Hosts...

Was hoping for a bit of insight into the following issue, if some kind soul could help a noob out :D Specs: Dell R510 2 x E5645 6 Core (HT enabled) at 2.4GHz 16GB RAM 8 x 2TB WD Red RAIDz2 Perc H310 in IT mode aka LSI 9211-8i Intel X520-DA2 10Gb SFP+ card Freenas 11.1-U4 I have 2 ESXI 6.5...

I can't get the SAS connected drives to show up in FN. I don't know why. It should be supported. Is there a setting I'm missing somewhere? Please... have a look at the info and screenshots and let me know if you spot the problem. I've read all kinds of stuff and not seeing whats wrong here. Any...

Hello everyone, My freenas is rebooting randomly when using iSCSI to backup my vm's using Vsphere Data Protection. I added the device to the ESXi without troubles and I have to RJ45 crossover cables which connect the freenas with the ESXi host. I wonder if I'm missing some network...

I think I've finally chased down a persistent problem I've been having for nearly a year since setting up ESXi on my SAN. Some background: I've been running an FC SAN with FreeNAS for a while longer than that, but most of what it's boiled down to has been hosting a large-ish FC slice for my...

Hi, I have this volume called HDD and I would like to extend it. There seems to be about 3TB of EXPANDSZ space, but I do not see an option to extend it. If I can do anything to reduce fragmentation, any advice would be very welcome as well. root@freenas:~ # zpool list NAME SIZE ALLOC...

Was wondering if anyone has had ruined/corrupt/non-bootable virtual machine files on FreeNas. Just built my FreeNas (11.1-U4) on standalone Dell R410 with 4 drives. Loaded FreeNas to its own harddrive, no Esxi on this server or drives at all. Other server is a DellR410 again fiber channel back...

Hi there, Still working on sourcing parts for my ESXi and FreeNAS (as a VM) build. I am loosely following Stux's AIO build guide (a great resource, to be sure)! I came across some info saying that ESXi can be booted from a 32 GB Sandisk Cruzer Fit USB 3.0 drive (older reported issues with...

Hi all, I have been doing some testing with iperf3 and FreeNAS running as a VM in ESXi 6.5 and have found that 10Gbe networking to be poor. I have kept it simple and kept FreeNAS and a CentOS 7 VM on the same host to take any issues with switches and cabling out of the picture. Everything is...

Hello everyone! I am troubleshooting a FreeNAS performance issue and was hoping someone out there could provide insight. First, here is my single zPool setup: pool: zPool01 state: ONLINE scan: none requested config: NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM zPool01 ONLINE...

I was watching my pools this morning with "zpool iostat -v 1" and noticed that every 5 seconds small writes are happening to all pools. This does not appear to be the "system dataset" thing that comes up in the forums every once in a while. All 3 pools are used as ESXi 6.5 datastores that are...

Hola saludos para todos, instalé FreeNAS-11.1-U1 desde cero en un VMware ESXi, 6.0.0, sobre un HP ProLiant DL380 Gen9 que tiene un Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 v3 @ 2.40GHz en lo que iba mirando y probándolo (nunca antes lo habia usado) creé una maquina virtual en el FreeNAS con Deepin para...

I've configured an iSCSI drive via FreeNAS and connected it to my windows 10 machine. If I click on "Devices" (German: "Geräte...") a disk "Disk -1" appears: The partion manager hangs up while searching for virtual drives. If I want to see details at the device manager it hangs up too...

I just updated to FreeNAS 11.1, and now my snapshots throw the following error "'Current license or ESXi version prohibits execution of the requested operation.". I'm using ESXi 6.5 with a free licence. I have not made any changes to ESXi, snapshots where mostly working before, any idea why is...

Hi there. So I'm putting together a system with the goal of running FN along with others as vms on esxi. I've installed an lsi 9211-8i card which I've flashed to IT mode. Currently, two spinning drives are connected to the lsi card which will be passed through to FN. I think that is good to...

This is a PSA. I had originally installed ESXi onto a USB drive a few years ago (I think I started with 5.0), and have been happily upgrading ESXi on that drive as new versions came out (using esxcli command-line - it's SO EASY) and life was very good. Until ESXi 6.5. The 6.0 to 6.5 in-place...

Hi, I have used FreeNAS for non-critical (file sharing, lab ESXi) use for a while now and I'm about to build our first production FreeNAS box and I'd like to have your advice. The plan is to use this server: HP DL380 G7 48 GB RAM 2x Xeon X5680 Smart Array P410i RAID controller 2 x 2TB...

Hello FreeNAS community, I am looking to move my samba server off my home router and on to a more powerful machine. I have a HTPC in my house that run 24/7, and would like to give it the job of acting as a server. Specs: intel i7 4770k 8GB RAM 3TB storage 1 onboard NIC 120GB ssd for windows...

I am having some issues with my ESX R710/H200e/MD1200 config. I have passed through the H200e to the VM in ESX. I followed the flashing guide for flashing the H200e to IT mode. (Took 3 computers to finally get the flash successful) When I try to create a volume I get the following error...

Hi, My problem is that it only wants to use one connected and not both. LACP is on both FreeNAS, ESXI, Switch. ESXI 5.5

Hi, CPU: X2 Intel xeon E5-2680V1 RAM: 256GB Motherboard: Supermicro X9DRH-7TF Network: Supermicro AOC-SGP-i4 (Intel i350T4) HBA-CARD: LSI 9300-16i HDD: X6 WD gold 6TB I'm a beginner so if you need to know something, just ask, please take a picture as it gets easier?

Hi All, I've got a partial ESX Demo Lab consisting of 2 Intel NUCs, with 3.5GHz CPUs and 32 GB RAM each, and with ESX as the operating system for a 2 TB SSD in each box. I'm trying to demo things like vMotion that require shared storage, and am trying to figure out if FreeNAS is the best...

This Resource is available at: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/how-to-a-guide-to-migrate-freebsd-vm-from-esxi-to-freenas-bhyve.72/ The original text is below. It may be out of date.

Hi, I have faced a strange issue as of the past few days where any time I perform a clone activity on my ESXi host (Dell r710) it will essentially stun the entire host for 700-900 seconds. Here is a bit more background on my environment: Server: Dell r710 NAS: Infortrend EonNAS PRO 850-2...

Hi all I want to make sure that I have iSCSI setup correctly with multipath between my FreeNAS and 2 ESXi servers. First the FreeNAS server: The FreeNAS server has a dual port 10GbE card each port is on a different subnet/VLAN, the iSCSI portal is linked to both 10GbE ports, there is one iSCSI...

Hi guys, I followed the freenas guide to setup freenas as vm on an esxi server. the freenas server gets 16 gigs of ecc ram, 2 cpu cores from a xeon 5520, and passthrough to a hba card with 6 * 2tb drives. this works perfect. the freenas server has a share that is used by esxi as datastore...

Hi; I have not used FreeNAS before but have installed and configured it as best I can. The issue I'm trying to figure out is how do I backup a Windows VM hosted on a separate VMWare ESXi 6.5 server to the FreeNAS? This is a non-production environment, just a test lab I use to play ... Here's...

Hello Everyone, I am currently in the process of implementing a new ESXi shared SAN in my home for provisioning and running VM's from. This new SAN will be created on an HP DL360e Gen8 1U server, with 4x 3.5 inch hot swap bays (two SATA 6.0 and two SATA 3.0 Gbps ports). The drives to be used...

Hi Guys, I recently bought/assembled the following system; Dell R510 flashed H200 card 2x xeon 5620 quad core (soon) 32 GB ram I want to use this for FreeNAS and at least a windows vm, possible more vm's, for some experimenting. Now I'm doubting about the best way to virtualize this stuff...

Config: FreeNAS-9.10.2-U4 on VMware ESXi 6.0 U3. 1 zPool = "Tank1" = 8 2-disk mirror vdevs (reference signature for all details), encrypted, no passphrase. Problem: Boot environment gone, attempted to import with recent config backup + recovery key (/data/GELI not available to restore)...