ESXI & Freenas - how do they integrate?

[RichTJ99]

Hi,

I have been running Freenas for a few weeks and have been enjoying it. I am constantly amazed at how well it runs & how stable the system is (primarily I am a windows user).

Playing with Virtualbox is also very cool & I think i can get rid of about 4 other boxes that run 24/7 in favor of it. Then I started reading about ESXI & started playing with that also.

I have a camera server which I would love to virtualize but it has a PCI express card & thats where ESXI might be the ticket (might not also).

I put a 2tb drive into the ESXI box for testing & have a few VM's running in it. I am not entirely sure how different PHPVirtualbox is from ESXI (for my purposes so far - pass through would be different).


So, the point of this post is that I see a VMWare snapshot section within storage. So it seems that Freenas/VMware work together somehow. It looks primarily that the ESXI datastore would be hosted on Freenas & then the Esxi server connects over Iscsi? Is that the main way it is being used?

Server 1: Esxi with USB drive (any other storage used typically?)
Server 2: Freenas setup with ISCSI
Server 3: Backup?

I am a little confused on how everything works together - am i close?

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Mirfster]

Basically you are on the right track. While I run ESXi, FreeNas and Hyer-V; I have them all using local storage. However, plenty of others have posted a lot on using FreeNas as a datastore for VMs.

Suggest you search the forums and I am sure you will find more than enough info.

Here are a few threads:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/questions-for-best-performance.40192/#post-252128
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...reenas-as-vm-storage.40086/page-3#post-254320

 

[RichTJ99]

Thanks for the links. Lots of information to review.

Are you running all three systems on separate hardware? How do you tend to access your VM's? How do you back them up as local storage?

 

[pirateghost]

Thanks for the links. Lots of information to review.

Are you running all three systems on separate hardware? How do you tend to access your VM's? How do you back them up as local storage?

Esxi and hyper-v would need to be run on separate hardware and unless freenas itself is virtualized (don't do this), it will be a third device.

You access VMS by whichever method is required by the host hypervisor. Esxi has a proprietary client application that gets installed on a windows machine or you can pay for some licensing to get a web GUI. Hyper-v also requires windows tools to access the consoles of the VMS. Once you have a VM running, you can access it via vnc, rdp, ssh, whatever the guest OS supports.

I prefer Proxmox. Linux based, runs linux containers, and KVM. Fully usable/configurable from a web GUI. Free for all the features you have to pay for with most other hypervisors. No client to install to operate.

There is also xen server, which I have tried over the years and found to be lacking.

Proxmox is my go to for my home setup.

 

[Mirfster]

Yeah I run them on separate hardware. All systems are Dell C2100/FS12-TY 2U Servers.

VMs are accessed by RDP mainly. For management I have several choices IP based KVM (Raritan), IPMI, a Dell Rackmount KVM. Funny thing is that all of this housed in a Dell 42 Server Rack that is in my closet. My "office" is all in a room which is about 18' x 18'

As far as ESXi (vSphere 5.5 update 3) , the VSphere Client is loaded on my Workstation (I have the free version that does not use the web gui).

At least 2 more servers will eventually be added which more than likely will be FreeNas as well. Will more either use them for backups of the other systems or test them as direct storage for the VMs. I have 10 GB NICs I can use, but no switch yet, so that is TBD.

 

[RichTJ99]

That Proxmox looks interesting & the features look pretty inclusive. The price is very reasonable & I may look into it for testing - how large is the community? As you know I often have a ton of questions. Do you run it on a standalone server or virtualized (or jailed within freenas)?

Mirfster - Would you updated to ESXi v6 which is also free or would that cause an issue?

Do you have any of your physical deskops accessing the VM on ESXi using vmware software (I am still fuzzy with the VM using local desktop resources thing).

 

[pirateghost]

That Proxmox looks interesting & the features look pretty inclusive. The price is very reasonable & I may look into it for testing - how large is the community? As you know I often have a ton of questions. Do you run it on a standalone server or virtualized (or jailed within freenas)?

Mirfster - Would you updated to ESXi v6 which is also free or would that cause an issue?

Do you have any of your physical deskops accessing the VM on ESXi using vmware software (I am still fuzzy with the VM using local desktop resources thing).

A jail in freenas is freebsd. That's it. You don't jail a linux box on freenas. As proxmox is a virtualization host it is run on a physical box. Virtualizing your virtualization host is not a good idea.

A VMware client is to manage the virtualization host.

 

[Mirfster]

Mirfster - Would you updated to ESXi v6 which is also free or would that cause an issue?

Haven't had the need so far to update to ESXi v6 to be honest. May eventually look into it later, but no rush on my part right now.

Do you have any of your physical deskops accessing the VM on ESXi using vmware software (I am still fuzzy with the VM using local desktop resources thing).

I connect to the VMs via RDP mainly. If I need to manage ESXi (create VM, snapshot, etc.), I just use the "VMware vSphere Client" that is installed on my workstation.

Not sure what you mean by VM using local desktop resources, since I have the VMs on a dedicated server. If I RDP to the VM, I can configure Windows Remote Desktop for some Local Resources (sound, clipboard, local drives, etc..).

 

[gpsguy]

For RichTJ99's knowledge (the rest of know it), you can also open a virtual machine console from the VMware client. I often use if I need to something simple.

A VMware client is to manage the virtualization host.

 

[pirateghost]

For RichTJ99's knowledge (the rest of know it), you can also open a virtual machine console from the VMware client. I often use if I need to something simple.

Sure. I tend to prefer the console over an rdp session. I was trying to simplify the explanation as it seems he is confused on how a virtual machine works/is accessed. Unless one actually uses them in an environment where it makes sense it is hard to visualize what the purpose or how the tools work.

 

[Mirfster]

^ Agreed

 

[gpsguy]

OK

I was trying to simplify the explanation ...

 

[jgreco]

?

 

[RichTJ99]

So another ESXI/Freenas question. Within Freenas in the storage section is a "VMware-Snapshot" tab. If you add a VMWare snapshot (as i did) & plug in all the information (which I did) to connect to the ESXi server it looks like the snapshots on ESXi are moved onto the freenas directory.

So I have Jails1/ESXi setup as the place the snapshots goto & VMware1 is the correct datastore.

I have a CIF share to the Jails1/ESXi directory as I am testing a NFS share in the same directory (performance isnt great but thats a different subject).

Should the snapshots be getting dumped into the Jails1/ESXi directory? How would I find them or restore a snapshot from Freenas to ESXi?

Also I have this error in my log:

Code:

WARNING: VMWare snapshot Jails1/ESXi@auto-20160218.0900-2w failed for the following VMs: [VMware1] Windows8/Windows8.vmx, [VMware1] Windows WS/Windows WS.vmx

Any suggestions on how to proceed?

 

[Mirfster]

Should the snapshots be getting dumped into the Jails1/ESXi directory? How would I find them or restore a snapshot from Freenas to ESXi?

From the Manual:

Storage ‣ VMware-Snapshot allows you to coordinate ZFS snapshots when using VMware as a datastore. Once this type of snapshot is created, FreeNAS® will automatically snapshot any running VMware virtual machines before taking a scheduled or manual ZFS snapshot of the dataset or zvol backing that VMware datastore. The temporary VMware snapshots are then deleted on the VMware side but still exist in the ZFS snapshot and can be used as stable resurrection points in that snapshot. These coordinated snapshots will be listed in Snapshots

While I have not done this personally, perhaps you would have to have additional configurations on the ESXi side to let it know about the FreeNas "DataStore"?

 

[RichTJ99]

I did setup the Freenas datastore on ESXi & it works great (well slow but functional). I am still on the fence on how I want to use Freenas with ESXi but I was trying to figure out the snapshot portion of it. It sounds like ESXi takes the snapshot then freenas copies it onto the freenas dataset and deletes it from ESXi. The snapshot then resides on freenas.

I may end up just using the freenas dataset as a NFS storage for backing up the actual VM's & skipping ESXi snapshots - I am familiar enough now with ESXi to do something really stupid - Freenas too!