ESXi virtualized TrueNAS cannot create VM

[John Doe]

Hi Folks,

I experience some errors trying to get a VM set up within Truenas, while truenas is already virtualized.

so basically Truenas is complaining

Checking ESXi options....

tickmark for hardware virtualization is not possible because pci device has been passed thru (HBA for the spinning rust)

I assume that is basically the missing function Truenas is complaining.


so I have 2 questions:

• Is there a known workaround?
• Is this limited to truenas core only or would scale require the same?

Would like to play with truenas as hypervisor and if successful get rid of ESXi in the long term.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Are you running TrueNAS as a storage provider to ESXi? And if yes, are you running it the recommended way by using PCIe passthrough for an HBA?

If both answers are yes, well done, that gives you a stable storage platform. But I have bad news: passthrough and nested virtualisation are mutually exclusive in ESXi. Simply a fact, no workaround.

OTOH why do you want to run a VM in TrueNAS if you have ESXi? Nested virtualisation is expensive in terms of ressources/performance and ESXi is far more capable than bhyve ...

 

[John Doe]

Are you running TrueNAS as a storage provider to ESXi? And if yes, are you running it the recommended way by using PCIe passthrough for an HBA?

If both answers are yes, well done, that gives you a stable storage platform. But I have bad news: passthrough and nested virtualisation are mutually exclusive in ESXi. Simply a fact, no workaround.

OTOH why do you want to run a VM in TrueNAS if you have ESXi? Nested virtualisation is expensive in terms of ressources/performance and ESXi is far more capable than bhyve ...

both yes

ok thanks for clarification!

you inspired my mind :-D having truenas as hypervisor (you might remember in the german forum).
So i might be able to set up another ESXi VM Truenas without HBA passed thru and can than create VMs in truenas to play around with it.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Where will you put the storage for that TrueNAS instance? TrueNAS as a hypervisor really only makes sense when run on bare metal. You have a hypervisor. It's ESXi

 

[John Doe]

the 2nd truenas instance will just be for testing purpose only.

I am not super happy with ESXi and I thought maybe truenas scale will develop to a more suitable alternative for me in the long term.

The virtual switch gui in ESXi is really good and I think something similar (eventhou not yet in GUI) is probabaly available. So this is a function i am interested in to test and see if it suits my needs.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

There simply is no better hypervisor and no more advanced virtual switching than in VMware. TrueNAS SCALE is not really better than CORE in that regard. You will probably be disappointed. There are no port groups that enable multiple VLANs per vSwitch etc. You need to hack it together with bridges and duct tape.

 

[Scharbag]

ESXi is the gold standard for Type 1 Hypervisors. It is far more more mature than TrueNAS for that given purpose. Testing for the fun of testing is, well, fun. But if you want it to work, use ESXi.