Expand VMware disk and FreeNAS ZFS dataset live

[JoeAtWork]

Hi Guys,

Are there plans to make a button so end users running FreeNAS in a VM can expand a data set when they are close to running out of disk space? We do this a lot with file servers running Windows on VMware, when we hit the 70% or 80% disk full mark, i.e. add like 50gig of disk space and then from the command line use diskpart or the GUI via "Computer Management/Storage/Disk Management" makes it cake.

On FreeNAS we have to add the 50gig and then

zpool list SuperTank
zpool status -v SuperTank
camcontrol reprobe da1
gpart resize -i 2 da1
zpool online -e SuperTank gptid/%GUID%
zpool list SuperTank

Thanks,
Joe

 

[jgreco]

It's unlikely but you can always make a feature request.

Most people running FreeNAS as a VM are intent on doing it with real disks though. There's relatively little interest in running FreeNAS as a VM with virtual disks, because the virtual disks will always be small-ish, at which point FreeNAS starts to look like a very heavyweight solution in terms of resource consumption to manage a small amount of storage.

 

[JoeAtWork]

I will have to figure out how to make that request. It would be useful for these edge cases:

1) instructor led training where all users have VM's running on VMware, vSphere hot add CPU/RAM/Disk
2) a domain controller, one dc on each node on a 2 node cluster at remote sites, a Windows AD DC is 8 gig of ram just sitting there
3) Domain integrated SAMBA file server for windows clients, better than a windows server, i.e. snapshots and no crypto locker

There may be more uses

 

[blanchet]

There are some interesting business cases for FreeNAS with VMware + vDisks:

• to add CIFS/NFS services when you have only VMware vSAN (commercial examples)
• to add iSCSI service when you have VMware ESXi with a NAS datastore without iSCSI support. (For example EMC Isilon has dropped iSCSI support since OneFS 8.0.0)

Therefore, adding a one-click button to expand the pool, would be very useful.

 

[blanchet]

I have just created a request for this feature (#73470)

 

[RegularJoe]

I hate iSCSI. If you have it mis configured or one of your iSCSI servers are down and you reboot a VMware ESXi host it will try for a VERY long time to connect. So long that your users think your ESXi system is not going to come up at all. With NFS it just boots up. LOL NFS 4.1 on ESXi 6.0+ allows multiple paths(session trunking). Smapshots are nice on VMware as well as you see all the files for the VM...

 

[blanchet]

I have written a script to expand ZFS pool after increasing virtual disks size.
https://github.com/sblanchet/freenas-vdisk-expand

It may help to wait for feature #73470.

 

[aaronski1]

I hate iSCSI. If you have it mis configured or one of your iSCSI servers are down and you reboot a VMware ESXi host it will try for a VERY long time to connect. So long that your users think your ESXi system is not going to come up at all. With NFS it just boots up. LOL NFS 4.1 on ESXi 6.0+ allows multiple paths(session trunking). Smapshots are nice on VMware as well as you see all the files for the VM...

+1 for NFS over iscsi. I had new esxi box "find" the issci and format the damn drive, erasing all my VM's. Never again. with NFS I can just transfer the VM files out using any old tool to a new location should I need to.

 

[RegularJoe]

Have you tried to setup the integrated snapshots between VMware and FreeNAS? I had it working on 9.10 with NFS and recently upgraded that one system to 11.2 so I have to re-look at it.

 

[jgreco]

iSCSI definitely isn't ideal unless you really understand it, at which point it becomes the preferred choice for many storage admins. NFS is definitely easier for your average home lab user. But when you want to go that last little bit, you really do need iSCSI.

 

[leonidascaptain]

I have written a script to expand ZFS pool after increasing virtual disks size.
https://github.com/sblanchet/freenas-vdisk-expand
It may help to wait for feature #73470.

Hi
When I run it, It says: zsh: command not found: vdisk-expand.sh
I've download the file in Windows, but how could I transfer it into FreeNAS PATH?
Thanks

 

[leonidascaptain]

I have written a script to expand ZFS pool after increasing virtual disks size.
https://github.com/sblanchet/freenas-vdisk-expand
It may help to wait for feature #73470.

Never mind, I did it. Thanks!

 

[c0y0te]

Never mind, I did it. Thanks!

I am getting same error. Any hints? I have cmod'd, called SH, still getting this error.