Elmer Fudd
Cadet
- Joined
- Feb 9, 2019
- Messages
- 3
I've run into an interesting problem when setting up FreeNAS on a Workstation VM. This is for learning purposes only. Time to get my feet wet in this storage world :) . I promise no important data will be lost.
When provisioning the VM, I created a 16GB preallocated disk / 2 CPU / 8GB RAM. No issues there, installed cleanly runs quickly. My problem comes from the storage to be used by FreeNAS as Disks / Storage. In Workstation I have the option to either create a .vmdk or use physical storage. This physical storage option then offers me an entire a physical disk, or a partition on a disk. I have tried both options. My thinking is that physical would be better because I'm eliminating one layer of IO, but that either approach should work, if Workstation is providing a proper low level path to the physical partition.
I should mention that underlying everything, the disk is in fact a RAID 5 array. I have created 3 partitions of 1.1 TB to play with.
My problem is this. When I use .vmdk's and set the size equal to the partition, the FreeNAS Disk page shows three disks (da1, da2, da3) each with 1.1 TB of space (this is correct). When I use the physical partition option (after removing the partitions from Windows) Workstation shows the partitions as 1.1TB (also correct), but FreeNAS reports each Disk as having 10.1 TB, basically 10x the actual amount. If I build a ZFS storage pool from this, I get a 20 GB pool.
All thoughts, comments, etc are welcome.
Thanks in advance.
When provisioning the VM, I created a 16GB preallocated disk / 2 CPU / 8GB RAM. No issues there, installed cleanly runs quickly. My problem comes from the storage to be used by FreeNAS as Disks / Storage. In Workstation I have the option to either create a .vmdk or use physical storage. This physical storage option then offers me an entire a physical disk, or a partition on a disk. I have tried both options. My thinking is that physical would be better because I'm eliminating one layer of IO, but that either approach should work, if Workstation is providing a proper low level path to the physical partition.
I should mention that underlying everything, the disk is in fact a RAID 5 array. I have created 3 partitions of 1.1 TB to play with.
My problem is this. When I use .vmdk's and set the size equal to the partition, the FreeNAS Disk page shows three disks (da1, da2, da3) each with 1.1 TB of space (this is correct). When I use the physical partition option (after removing the partitions from Windows) Workstation shows the partitions as 1.1TB (also correct), but FreeNAS reports each Disk as having 10.1 TB, basically 10x the actual amount. If I build a ZFS storage pool from this, I get a 20 GB pool.
All thoughts, comments, etc are welcome.
Thanks in advance.