FreeNAS 8.0.3 on VMware ESXi 5 - No Member Disks

[mlbailey]

I built a NAS with 5 disks: 1 internal 32GB SSD for VMware ESXi 5 and 4 HITACHI Deskstar 7K3000 2TB 6GB/s for the NAS storage drives. I installed FreeNAS 8.0.3 in VMware ESXi 5 as a virtual machine. When I try to "Create Volume" there are no "Member Disks" available to create a new volume. I have created 4 data stores in ESXi 5 (1 for each Hitachi drive) and rebooted the server, but there are still no member disks. Can anyone help me get FreeNAS to see my hard drives?

My motherboard is: ASUS E35M1-I DELUXE Fusion AMD E-350 APU (1.6GHz, Dual-Core) AMD Hudson M1 Mini ITX Motherboard/CPU Combo

VMware ESXi Datastore List


FreeNAS Create Volume - No Member Disks!

 

[uutzinger]

I found something like this posted elsewhere and it makes a pass through drive. It works for me on 8 drives with ESXi 5.

Enable SSH on the ESXi server (debug options on console).
SSH to the server (same way as on console)

cd vmfs/volumes/datastore1
mkdir RDM
cd RDM

ls /dev/disks -l
will make something like:

vml.0100000000202020202057442d574341534a31343733303735574443205744 -> t10.ATA_____WDC_WD10EACS2D00ZJB0__________________________WD2DWCASJ1473075 NO PART

Then make a file (like a config file) for each drive by replacing the appropriate text below with text from above output and executing:

vmkfstools -z /vmfs/devices/disks/vml.0100000000202020202020564e52443345433443385038554d484453373232 RDM_00.vmdk -a lsilogic

RDM_??.vmdk is the file that is needed for each drive. All in one line.

Then add "existing" drive to vm in vSphere Client and select the RDM*.vmdk you created above (browse the data store).

That will make pass through drive. Use with single vm only.
I am not sure if there is simple GUI way in ESxi 5 to do this (like VM workstation pass through).
If you need to clean the drives or test them you can also use ultimate boot CD/gparted magic.iso and inspect the drives. I have ISO directory on the datastore drive.

If you have partitions and want to use them in pass through mode you can use same command but with different options (Google vmkfstools).

I believe performance is good but I do not have numbers to share.

 

[mlbailey]

Thanks uutzinger! I found the complete instructions here: http://blog.davidwarburton.net/2010/10/25/rdm-mapping-of-local-sata-storage-for-esxi for anyone else who would like to try this.

 

[rs232]

raw-mapping is the way to go! I've been running FreeNAS on ESXi for 3 years now.

Just on advice: Do keep note/track of what file maps to what HD. AFAIK raw-mapping usually refers to the serial number of the HD.

In case of disk failure identify the right one to be replaced is not trivial at all and the last thing you want to do is to unplug a working disk from a degraded pool ;-)

rs232

 

[uutzinger]

I use FreeNAS 7.2 and with pass through one separate drive gives me about 50MB/s write and 58MB/s read (Hitachi Deskstar 150GB 7200rpm).

With the 8 drives forming RAID5 I am not as lucky as I have about 36MB/s write and 42MB/s read on the RAID. Those are WD10 drives, some with 4k and others with 512 sectors (EARS, EADS and EACS) but all are using 512 sectors in the RAID. I also noticed that if I give 4 cores to the machine, disk performance is lower (10-20%) than with 2 cores and 1 core is about the same as 2 cores.

I think that performance is ok but I wonder if software RAID5 and vmware pass through is not a good idea or if for better performance one needs to use the same disk models (which is independent of vmware).

 

[rs232]

when you say raid 5 do you mean the freenas 7 software raid or zfs raidz1?

My NAS(es) give me all sort of performances. Randomly. min 10MB/s max 55MB/s.

I don't think the pass through is a reason for this at all. The single drive (still raw-mapped) I had on my prev freenas installation would give me 55MB constantly.

My performance problems are surely related to ZFS which needs lot of resources (currently my Freenas vm has 2 vCPU and 6Gb of RAM) and custom tweaking.

HTH

 

[leenux_tux]

I had some performance issues with ESXi5 using FreeNAS as a data/VM store. Initially I used NFS, then went to iSCSI, but the big difference came when I enabled the onboard GB network card, added a vSwitch to VMWare and dedicated the vSwitch to iSCSI traffic only. Definitely worth a look at if you haven't already done so