Another ESXI + FreeNAS all-in-one question

[amires]

Hi all,

I have recently installed ESXI 5.5U1 with FreeNAS as VM and M1015 passed through. I am using iSCSI to provide datastore to the esxi. Everything is working as it should however whenever I restart my esxi host the iscsi datastore gets dropped due to the fact the FreeNAS have not booted yet and I have to manually add the datastore again. Anyone have a similiar problem?

 

[cyberjock]

Yep. Thats normal and there's nothing you can do about it. I don't re-add my datastore though. I just rescan devices and it pops up.

 

[amires]

Thanks cyberjock. I just wish there was a workaround so I could automatically start my vms with esxi.

 

[c32767a]

Hi all,

I have recently installed ESXI 5.5U1 with FreeNAS as VM and M1015 passed through. I am using iSCSI to provide datastore to the esxi. Everything is working as it should however whenever I restart my esxi host the iscsi datastore gets dropped due to the fact the FreeNAS have not booted yet and I have to manually add the datastore again. Anyone have a similiar problem?

You could probably adjust the login timeout on the iSCSI initiator:

• Go to Storage Adapters > iSCSI Software Adapter > Properties.
• Click Advanced and scroll down to LoginTimeout.
• Change it to a value that's longer than the boot time of your FreeNAS VM.

After you find the right value, you'll have to go back and add delays before starting your other VMs.

Note that changing the iSCSI login timeout may have unexpected side effects. I'd test it for a while with a test VM and datastore before committing to it on your main datastore.

 

[mattlach]

Generally it's not recommended to host your datastore on a Guest in the same host... Circular dependencies suck (and can be quite unstable :p )

But maybe there are workarounds? What if you were to use NFS instead of iSCSI? Does that time out too?

 

[amires]

You could probably adjust the login timeout on the iSCSI initiator:

• Go to Storage Adapters > iSCSI Software Adapter > Properties.
• Click Advanced and scroll down to LoginTimeout.
• Change it to a value that's longer than the boot time of your FreeNAS VM.

After you find the right value, you'll have to go back and add delays before starting your other VMs.


Note that changing the iSCSI login timeout may have unexpected side effects. I'd test it for a while with a test VM and datastore before committing to it on your main datastore.

Ok, I tried fiddling with LoginTimeout however it didn't work. The maximum supported value is 60 which is one minute and still seems to be not enough for the FreeNAS VM to boot. The strange thing is after a reboot of ESXi I have to add the datastore again, rescanning didnt work as cyberjock suggested. Also note that I am using a separate virtual switch without binding it to an external nic to provide iscsi network between FreeNAS VM and ESXi, not sure if it is problem but anyway I am going to remove this vswitch and bind iSCSI to my LAN nic and try again.

Generally it's not recommended to host your datastore on a Guest in the same host... Circular dependencies suck (and can be quite unstable :p )

But maybe there are workarounds? What if you were to use NFS instead of iSCSI? Does that time out too?

I havent tried NFS since I am running ESXi 5.5U1 and I read a couple of articles about how 5.5U1 have problems with NFS But anyway I am going to give it a try.