Confused, about VM FreeNAS. VM OS / Non-VM HDs

[Neko77025]

Guess I will start with Hardware.

HP ML350 G6
Dual Xeon X5670 (6c/12t / 2.9GHz x 2 )
18 x 8Gb DDR3 1333 ECC Samsung (144gb DD3)
2 x 300gb SAS 10k HDD (Raid 1 / Server OS)**
2 x 200gb SAS SSD (Raid 1 / VMs OS)**
HP Smart Array P410i (On board LSI 8x SAS RAID controller)**
5 x Seagate Constellation ES.3 ST3000NM0053 3 TB (Raid Z2 / FreeNAS storage)
Intel EXPI9404PT PRO/1000 Quad NIC
GeForce GT 730
PCIe 1x Dual port SATA III ( Koutech IO-PESA230) Only used if SSD below +++
(maybe) 128gb SSD for Cache or VM OS ?+++
Server OS (win 10 and going too use VMware for VMs based on FreeNAS guide)

The server is going too be my VM box, VMs I plan on having 3x Win 10 (2x of them are for streaming to TVs), Win 95 VM (long story), FreeNAS, PFsense Router and one MINT.

FreeNAS VM Will have 4Cores, 16gb, and all 5 3TB Drives for Z2. 120gb SSD for Cache, SATA III passthrough for that.

FreeNAS Use, Plex, HDhomerun Prime DVR, PlexDVR, (Pics/docs however these are already backed up online.) Main use is Plex / DVR.


Where I am confused. The FreeNAS VM guide, Talks about not being behind hardware controllers.

Is it talking about the FreeNAS OS VM, or RAIDZ2 VM or Both ?

I was planing on put the OS on A VM Partition of the RAID1 Sever SSDs, or should I make A passthrough for the SATA III controller, Make A 20gb Partition on the SSD and run the FreeNAS OS on that and USE the rest for Cache ?

SIDE NOTE ( I think all the on board SATA ports are SATA II, That is why I have the SATA III PCIe card. only for the SSD if need, the HDs I am ok running on SATA II )

Thank you, Neko

 

[gpsguy]

The real concern is for the RAIDz2 volume. You need a proper HBA for FreeNAS.

For best performance in a virtualized environment, striped mirrors are preferrable.

Don't partition the SSD for multiple uses.

Where I am confused. The FreeNAS VM guide, Talks about not being behind hardware controllers.

Is it talking about the FreeNAS OS VM, or RAIDZ2 VM or Both ?

I was planing on put the OS on A VM Partition of the RAID1 Sever SSDs, or should I make A passthrough for the SATA III controller, Make A 20gb Partition on the SSD and run the FreeNAS OS on that and USE the rest for Cache ?

 

[darkwarrior]

Hi there,

First of all: What is your plan ?
You are listing Windows 10 as your "server" OS and you wanna install VMWare "workstation" (i Guess... )
That will not work ... You need a full blown Type1 Hypervisor. Anything else will just not give you the results you're looking for.
In that scenario all the VMs will run directly on your hardware and you will need to "administer" your ESXi server using the Vsphere client.
Additional: In general PCI passthrough is only working with Baremetal Hypervisors

When running FreeNAS virtualized you need to passthrough the complete diskcontroller to the Freenas VM (you can't just passthrough 1 port for example). FreeNAS needs the full access to the disks, to be able to make SMART tests (for example)
If the FreeNAS "bootdisk" resides on your RAID1 Server SSD, you will not be to use another partition on the same disk.
(By default) Freenas uses the complete disks.
Technically you can add another VM disk under VMWare and use that as a SLOG or L2ARC device, but the performance, because of the virtualisation abstraction layer, will be a pain (I tried it out for my lab ...)

Concerning your Koutech IO-PESA230 add-on card:
I could not find any information of it being compatible with FreeBSD...