Advice how to build my new environment (running FreeNAS and ESXi simultaneously)

[Pandora]

Hello there!

I'm completely new to FreeNAS, but I think this could be something nice for me But I'm not sure how to set up everything correctly, so I'd like to ask you guys for some advice.

Here's the hardware I have available:
1 single machine, which includes:
A RAID Controller (LSI MegaRAID 9431-8i), officially supported (HCL) by VMWare for running ESXi
5x 2TB HDDs
1x 160GB HDD
12GB RAM (will be upgraded soon to at least 16GB)
1x Intel i3, 2.5GHz

What I'd like to achieve:
Until now, I had Windows 2012 directly installed onto the 160GB HDD, the 5 2TB HDDs set up in a RAID-5 to prevent data loss if one disk fails. I was running some services like SickBeard, Squeezebox Server and so on. Additionally all my

Movies, Music, Pictures etc. where stored on the RAID volume and shared via normal Windows folder sharing.
But I'd like to have some virtualization at home (has to be ESXi), so I can set up and run multiple machines. Not a lot of course, as the current hardware isn't able to cover many VMs.
My first idea was to setup the ESXi (installed to the 160GB HDD), and then create the wanted virtual machines. For the mentioned file share, one of the machines would contain FreeNAS with one big virtual disk attached to it.

But after some googling, I read that this doesn't seem to a be good idea for several reasons, like performance issues, loosing some of the available disk space etc.


What would you guys recommend? How should I set up the environment, so I can benefit from FreeNAS and ESXi at the same time on the same machine?

 

[no_connection]

If you don't have a problem with the risk of loosing the data on the pool then you'll be fine. (without warning might I add)

You would still benefit from checksums of ZFS but you would not have any redundancy to fix it if you present only one disk.

Performance are probably going to suffer a bit as well but it may or may not be of any issue.

I wanted to use one server for both, but ended up with two, one for FreeNAS and one for ESXi. I'm glad I did.

 

[Pandora]

Thanks for your input!
I do have a good backup in place (onsite to another machine and for the most important data -> offsite in addition). So I'm covered for that in worst case.
Performance is more interesting, but I guess if it's not that much I'm going to lose, it's okay. Needs to be tested anyway.

I wanted to use one server for both, but ended up with two, one for FreeNAS and one for ESXi. I'm glad I did.

I'd love to have an additional machine, but on the one hand I have no idea how to build up everything correctly with a second machine and on the other hand it's also a financial decision.

But just 'cause I'm curious and we're still a little bit on topic at least :D -> How is this set up with two machines in general? FreeNAS on one machine with all the HDDs locally as storage and ESXi on the other one, but all the data goes trough network to FreeNAS? So ESXi doesn't have any disks locally? Isn't the network, let's say 1Gbps, still a huge bottleneck when running multiple VMs?


Of course I'm still open for any further opinions regarding the main topic

 

[gpsguy]

Please read these excellent threads, started by @jgreco.

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...nas-in-production-as-a-virtual-machine.12484/

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ide-to-not-completely-losing-your-data.12714/

If you decide to virtualize and things go tits up, don't expect much help on the forums.

Like no_connection, I have both an ESXi and FreeNAS (separate) server in my home lab.

 

[cyberjock]

As someone that has admitted they are "new to FreeNAS" I think this is a very bad way to do things. I won't even go into further detail because it's been discussed to death. As gpsguy said, if you do this and things go bad, expect us to give you a laugh and ignore you. We know it's a bad idea to do what you are doing, so proceed at your own risk and expect there to be no support when (not if) things go badly.