FreeNAS 11.2 VMware Workstation 15 using a vmdk vs physical disk/partition

[Elmer Fudd]

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.

 

[Chris Moore]

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.

Thanks for the disclaimer. People would loose their minds. Safe storage is what we are all about.

I have (at different times) configured a virtual FreeNAS for testing using Microsoft HyperV and using Virtual Box, but I don't recall using VMware Workstation. I might have used it because I did have version 11 and 12 of that product and just recently got version 15 myself, but I have not created any VMs. Too many things to do.

I think you want to get rid of those separate hardware partitions and just have one big pool of disk space that your testing VM can access. The thing that I did with the configurations I built, because it is just for testing, not for production, is create virtual disk files that sit on top of my Windows NTFS file system. I created 12 at 10GB (not TB) each, so I could play with a bunch of different configurations. I tried mirrors and RAIDz and different numbers of vdevs.

I hope you will have some more questions, so we can provide you with more guidance. Please look at the links under the "Useful Links" button in my signature. There is a lot of very useful information there. Also, have a look at the Resources section of the forum.

 

[Elmer Fudd]

Chris - Thanks for your reply. I'm hoping someone else has maybe seen this and can tell me what's happening around the physical access. But yes, the disclaimer, no important bits will be sacrificed in this project. I'm about safe storage too!

This project is probably a stepping stone in the move toward NAS from this single system I'm using now. The underlying storage layers are two arrays: one on the MB with 4 drives as a RAID5, the other on an Adaptec controller with 8 drives as a RAID6. Totals about 20 TB total. Lots of RAW photos .

 

[Chris Moore]

I'm hoping someone else has maybe seen this and can tell me what's happening around the physical access.

From my past experience with VMware Workstation and FreeNAS, I would sat that there is some incompatibility with attempting to pass hardware through to the VM. It isn't needed and limiting yourself to only having three disks significantly limits the configurations you can test with your virtual FreeNAS.

This project is probably a stepping stone in the move toward NAS from this single system I'm using now. The underlying storage layers are two arrays: one on the MB with 4 drives as a RAID5, the other on an Adaptec controller with 8 drives as a RAID6.

If it is your goal to make this a long term solution, you need to do a lot more reading and understanding regarding ZFS, the file system of FreeNAS. ZFS is intended to replace hardware RAID, not to run on top of hardware RAID. The best course of action would be to build a system that is intended for FreeNAS instead of trying to make FreeNAS run in a system that is not made in the way FreeNAS is intended to work.
Not including the cost of drives, you can pickup a used server for around $500. This is the ideal time of year for it because many organizations buy new gear around the end of the year and the first few months of the year is when they sell off the old gear.
This unit for example:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/SuperMicro...i-F-2x-6-Core-E5-2620-2Ghz-Sleds/192816211745

It has a hardware RAID controller in it, but you can throw that in the garbage, where it belongs, or sell it back on eBay, and put a SAS HBA in it to make this an almost perfect FreeNAS server.

Something like this would be a direct replacement for the RAID controller that server has installed now:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/LSI-SAS-92...s-9200-9207-PCIE-3-0-ZFS-SAS9200/273693074120

ZFS needs direct access to the disks because ZFS manages the redundancy in software.

 

[Elmer Fudd]

Understood, agreed, and very likely the direction this will go.