Blame FreeNAS or VMWare/corrupt VMs on FreeNAS

[Nanosynth]

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 to back to the FreeNas server. No switch in between, no need for it. Identical Qlogic cards in each server. Identical hardware in both servers. The NON FreeNas server has Esxi5.1 on it and I run all my VM's off this server. I just store copys of these VM's on the FreeNas server, its a datastore for the Esxi5 on the other server. Copied back my very first VM from FreeNas server to Esxi5.1 server and transfer went fine. Tried to start up the just transferred VM and the console view in Esxi just constantly flashed the black screen with the word VM Ware on it. The VM would NOT boot. Nothing. Then I moved another different VM back over from the FeeNas server to the Esxi served and it said it was missing the "grub" and something about a invalid license. What license? This is Debian 8, I don't need no license, never installed a license. Another corrupt VM just moved from FreeNas to the Esxi server. Then I had 2 more VM's on the Freenas box so I added them as VM's to Esxi (I did not move them over) and again, started the VM up and this time it had black screen with something about a "COMPRESSION" error. Seriously?? What is corrupting these perfectly good VM's when I move them over to the FreeNas box via fiber channel with a brand new 2 foot multi mode fiber and NO switch in between? The files all transfer in their enitrety, everything looks perfect on the transfer but they fail to start up. Does the Freenas box use compression that I dont want and dont need that may be messing up perfectly good VM files?

 

[Ericloewe]

FreeNAS uses compression, yes. No, it is not the cause of your problem. Yes, you do want it.

Are you taking proper precautions when copying the images? Are you shutting down the VMs, or at the very least trying to quiesce their disk activity?

 

[Nanosynth]

FreeNAS uses compression, yes. No, it is not the cause of your problem. Yes, you do want it.

Are you taking proper precautions when copying the images? Are you shutting down the VMs, or at the very least trying to quiesce their disk activity?

 

[Nanosynth]

This is a very odd problem. Both of these servers is in my LAB, so no one but me on them. Yes, I always shut the VM down, and when it turns blue then I transfer it. I can transfer complete VM's between the 4 drives on the one server that does not have FreeNas on it and they work fine when restarted. So if compression is not bothersome, and all I have read it isn't a problem in FreeNas, I was going to wipe the FreeNas drives clean, and abandon the Fiber Channel transfer path and try Ethernet. I mean, I don't know what else to try. FreeNas is a beautiful thing and I really like it. I just used the fiber channel because "it was there" and its cool..lol

 

[Zredwire]

Maybe it is something in the fiber channel. I use Freenas as my ESXI store and have moved VM's to the Freenas and back from the Freenas with no problems.

 

[Ericloewe]

Yeah, Fiber Channel is the next most likely culprit. Which is still weird.

 

[Nanosynth]

I bought 2 10gigE PCIe cards (just waiting now for them) and that special electrical cable with the SFP's built on to the ends that plug into these cards. I will put them in when I get them and try it out.

 

[Nanosynth]

Well, for anyone who reads this, and has massive corruption going on, for me it was the 4gig fiber channel cards/setup to the ESXi server. I replaced them with $25 a piece 10gig E cards and what do you know, no errors or corruption anymore on the data/storage.

 

[toadman]

Glad you fixed it!

What 10gbe cards did you use? Just curious.

 

[Nanosynth]

This whole 10gig card thing has really been an experiment at best, actually disheartening so far. I bought 2 identical Mellanox $25 specials, MNPA19-XTR and a 3ft twin ax cable with the SFP's permanently attached. My server specs are still the same from first post here. I put the one card into the FreeNAS Dell and it showed up right away, nice. The Esxi Dell, I could not get it to work for anything. I loaded drivers with WIN SCP into the VM Linux file system, did all the long commands and still Esxi 5.1 would not see the card. I gave up. So I ordered 2 more identical Qlogic QLE8152 10g cards, but I don't have them yet. Yesterday I found an old HP 10gig card in a locker at our company's co-locate space so I put it into the Esxi Dell last night and it came right up! No drivers, nothing. So I linked them back to back, one Mellanox and one HP, and config it all from a nice instructions written here on this board, and got them talking, 10g IP. So I did some tests moving a 25gig VM from Esxi server to FreeNAS. Mind you, no switch in here, just back to back dedicated 10gig just for this purpose. Management traffic is on separate NIC/subnet, and this is in my bedroom. No matter what I do, I cannot get better than 32 minutes to transfer 25gig VM. I tried MTU 9000, tunables, everything I could suggested on this board and nothing. I mean it neither got worse nore better, like it just didn't matter what adjusmtnets I made. It is the SAME speed at the 4g fiber channel mess I had, except this time the VM's work. When I get my Qlogic's in I will put them both in and play around with it again. I'm not really complaining here, its just for fun..no that there is no more corruption.

 

[toadman]

I hope the Qlogics work for you. I was curious because of the ESXi part. I've been thinking of a couple dedicated cards myself. I've got 3 ESXi servers, two of which are running a freenas VM. There are cases where I'm doing a backup and/or moving VMs around that 10g would help with. Not urgent, but curious to see how others are fairing. Thx for the update!