Evaluating TrueNAS on a VMware Fusion VM - Non-unique disk serial numbers

[dpatterson]

Environment:
- MacOS 10.14.6 (Mojave)
- Dual 6-core Intel Xeon
- 64GB RAM
- VMware Fusion 8.5.8
- TrueNAS 13.0-U5.3

I am trying to determine if I can accomplish all of the things that I would like to with a TrueNAS server. To that end I am trying to get up to speed by installing TrueNAS on a VMware Fusion VM under MacOS strictly as a prototyping and learning exercise. If something goes sideways, data loss will be annoying, not a real problem.

That being said, I've run into a problem early on.

I created the VM:
- 2 cores
- 8GB RAM
- Unique IP address via DHCP
- 3 40GB virtual drives, one for boot, two for data

TrueNAS installed without issue. However, when I went to create the pool, I get an error about non-unique drive serial numbers:

Code:

Warning: There are 2 disks available that have non-unique serial
numbers. Non-unique serial numbers can be caused by a cabling issue
and adding such disks to a pool can result in lost data.

Editing the ddb.uuid parameter in the .vmdk file resulted in, essentially, a boot failure (the .vmdk file is technically a binary file).
.
A bit of searching resulted in a parameter that can be added to the .vmx file: disk.EnableUUID = “TRUE”
This is apparently only valid for ESXi, not Fusion. Adding that to my Fusion .vmx file resulted in an error from Fusion when I booted the VM (TRUE is not a valid value; defaulted to FALSE).

So the questions:
- Is there a way to set the drive serial numbers in Fusion?
- Is there a way around this in TrueNAS?
- If not, can I do reasonable evaluation/prototyping with a single-disk pool?

TIA

 

[HoneyBadger]

Hey @dpatterson

Sorry to hear that Fusion isn't working with the UUID parameters, either applied to the VMX or hacked into the VMDK's themselves.

To quickly answer your questions in order:

- Is there a way to set the drive serial numbers in Fusion?
Not that I can find. It seems like this is only an option for ESXi and possibly Workstation.

- Is there a way around this in TrueNAS?
I believe TrueNAS SCALE has a checkbox to ignore duplicate/missing serial numbers - CORE though does not have this option.

- If not, can I do reasonable evaluation/prototyping with a single-disk pool?
Absolutely; save for operations that would involve simulating multiple disks, such as trying out the "replace disk" or "expand capacity" workflows. Because it's strictly for prototyping, learning, and experimenting, a single-drive stripe will be warned against in the UI (requiring a checkbox to "force create the pool") but will otherwise function exactly the same. You can create datasets, shares, configure permissions, do snapshots and replication - I'd just recommend against storing anything of value there. Check the TrueNAS SCALE Evaluation Guide for some ideas if you're curious as to where to start poking around.

Welcome!

 

[dpatterson]

Thanks for the info.
I guess I'll set up a single-drive stripe and muck about a bit so that I can learn the interface, CLI, jails, etc.

 

[axhxrx]

Wow, sorry it didn't work for you in Fusion, but just for the record it DID work for me on Windows using VMWare Workstation 17.5.

That is to say, shutting down my TrueNAS SCALE VM, then adding disk.enableUUID = "TRUE" at the end of my VM's .vmx file did make that error go away. (Have not yet debugged things beyond this, though.)

I'm actually doing something weird — trying to make a VM that has a TrueNAS SCALE system to which my actual hardware TrueNAS SCALE system replicates its datasets. The reason I want it to replicate my real NAS to a Windows VM is that my entire Windows PC is backed up to Backblaze at a very affordable cost ($14/month for as much direct attached storage as my PC can handle (currently 96TB)).

Not yet sure this will work out, but the tip above helped me clear the first hurdle, thanks!

The reason I need to use multiple virtual disks is that VMWare Workstation has a limit of 8TB per virtual disk.

And the reason I don't pass through physical disks is that Backblaze only backs up disks that are connected to and readable by Windows.

 

[dpatterson]

Okay. After a lot more searching and some trial and error, I seem to have a working VM.
I've switched to TrueNAS Scale as I think that will probably be a better fit for my needs.

The solution seems to have been to allow VMWARE to split the virtual disks into multiple files AND to include the disk.enableUUID = "TRUE" parameter in the .vmk file.

For whatever reason, creating single-file virtual disks results in all of them having the same UUID in their configuration files. Allowing VMWARE t o split them results in unique IDs. Go figure. The enableUUID parameter IS still required, though.

Thanks/