FreeNAS 11.0U4 on VMware - Okay to Delete Disk at VM Level?

[JRE]

My predecessor implemented FreeNAS 11.0U4 on VMware. He built several pools using several vDisks.
One of these pools can now be decommissioned and I want to reclaim the vDisk. I carefully did the following:

• Used "zpool status" to determine the underlying storage for the pool

useengnas# zpool status APMR-CDD​

pool: APMR-CDD​

state: ONLINE​

scan: scrub repaired 0 in 0h34m with 0 errors on Sun Mar 1 00:34:03 2020​

config:​

​

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM​

APMR-CDD ONLINE 0 0 0​

gptid/5624bd20-d604-11e7-9d06-005056b6569a ONLINE 0 0 0​

​

errors: No known data errors​

• Used "gpart list" to match the pool to the storage device

useengnas# gpart list da2 | egrep -i "name|raw"​

Geom name: da2​

1. Name: da2p1​

rawuuid: 56133a64-d604-11e7-9d06-005056b6569a​

rawtype: 516e7cb5-6ecf-11d6-8ff8-00022d09712b​

2. Name: da2p2​

rawuuid: 5624bd20-d604-11e7-9d06-005056b6569a​

rawtype: 516e7cba-6ecf-11d6-8ff8-00022d09712b​

1. Name: da2​

• Deleted SMB and NFS Shares from the zpool
• Deleted the volume

Now I want to reclaim the virtual disk. In the User Guide, I see instructions for replacing a failed disk, but I do not see any instructions about how to simply remove a disk that is not in use. I see this: "If the hardware is not AHCI capable, shut down the system to physically replace the disk. When finished, return to the GUI and locate the OFFLINE disk." I presume AHCI is "Advanced Host Controller Interface" and I don't know what this means when I'm working on a VM.

My question is, can I use vSphere to remove the da2 disk while FreeNAS is running?

Many Thanks,
Janet

 

[jenksdrummer]

if da2 isn't used anywhere within the FreeNAS box (IE< not in a pool/boot/swap) and you want to dump the VMDK to reclaim space on your datastore, you should be able to remove it from the VMWare side of things w/o issue. FreeNAS and VMWare both support hot plug/unplug. May want to reboot it afterwards, or, play it safer and shut it down since a reboot wouldn't hurt.