FREENAS as Middleman to connect CIFS and export NFS or iSCSI

[RyanWls]

Hello,

I need to setup a "middleman" virtual machine that will be capable of mounting a network
accessible (LAN) storage with CIFS protocol and export the same via NFS or iSCSI protocol.

I am not sure if FREENAS is capable of this task, if so, please advice.

Also, please comment if this is a big overhead for storing and accessing this way Virtual Machines.

The source of the problem is that my datacenter offers reliable storage on the LAN,
but only through CIFS / Samba share and I need to use it as Datastore in ESXi (vmware),
which only supports NFS & iSCSI network accessible storage...


Thanks, waiting for your insight !

 

[anodos]

Hello,

I need to setup a "middleman" virtual machine that will be capable of mounting a network
accessible (LAN) storage with CIFS protocol and export the same via NFS or iSCSI protocol.

I am not sure if FREENAS is capable of this task, if so, please advice.

Also, please comment if this is a big overhead for storing and accessing this way Virtual Machines.

The source of the problem is that my datacenter offers reliable storage on the LAN,
but only through CIFS / Samba share and I need to use it as Datastore in ESXi (vmware),
which only supports NFS & iSCSI network accessible storage...


Thanks, waiting for your insight !

If your storage is available only through samba, use a hypervisor that supports SMB datastores. Xenserver does this.

 

[RyanWls]

If your storage is available only through samba, use a hypervisor that supports SMB datastores. Xenserver does this.

Unfortunately, changing the Hypervisor is not an option on this setup / project.

I have no local access on the machines and the datacenter only provides ESXi.

Thanks for the proposal though, it could be handy on other projects or other people reading this thread in the future...



If anyone can address my initial question, I'd be really thankful.

Does FREENAS support such setup ???

 

[anodos]

Unfortunately, changing the Hypervisor is not an option on this setup / project.

I have no local access on the machines and the datacenter only provides ESXi.

Thanks for the proposal though, it could be handy on other projects or other people reading this thread in the future...



If anyone can address my initial question, I'd be really thankful.

Does FREENAS support such setup ???

I don't think anything supports such a setup.

 

[cyberjock]

FreeNAS is not designed to do this. While I think that it could be done with enough tweaking and such, I wouldn't recommend this in a production environment. The time and effort really won't pay off and there's other options that are probably faster and easier (not to mention not walking a fine line between what is support and not).

 

[RyanWls]

and there's other options that are probably faster and easier

Can you please give me the right direction of how this could be done easily ???

I can easily auto-mount on boot the CIFS as a Linux mount in an Ubuntu or other distro,
but exporting via NFS / iSCSI, is something I'm not familiar with ...


Thanks for any help !

 

[cyberjock]

You'll need to setup the NFS share yourself using any linux distro. Google for "NFS guide for X" where X is your favorite linux distro and see what comes up. I'm not a linux guy (and to be blunt, this forum isn't linux either) so there's not much help you'll find here on the topic.

Sorry I can't help more. :(

 

[RyanWls]

does any other ready-made storage management distro support this functionality ?

anyone knows ???

 

[pirateghost]

I have to say, this sounds fishy.

The reason I say this is because your datacenter offers you CIFS shares and ESXi, knowing that ESXi can't talk to CIFS shares....

This sounds like you may be trying to get around rules they have in place, and personally, I think only offering CIFS shares to their customers is stupid, and the whole thing sounds like a giant case of "Get the hell out of that datacenter"

If you are not willing to take the time to go download a Linux distro (any distro will do this) and learn how to do this yourself (considering how dumb the whole idea is anyway), don't expect us to do the legwork for you. You won't find a NAS-distro that will do this off the shelf without some hackery and understanding what the hell you are doing.

Which brings me back to my original point. GET THE HELL OUT OF THAT DATACENTER. Seriously. If this is your production environment, your data is already at risk.

 

[RyanWls]

I say this is because your datacenter offers you CIFS shares and ESXi

The Datacenter is Hetzner and I am trying to use "Storage Box" service as datastore for ESXi.
The Datacenter does not offer ESXi support, it's installed on external USB and management is customer's problem...

considering how dumb the whole idea is anyway

Why do you think this is dump ?

Will it have poor performance or some unforseeable risk ?

The "Storage Box" is supposed to be redundant and reliable and it's in the same LAN, so speed should be fine ...

Any founded reasons you base this verdict ?

If this is your production environment, your data is already at risk

Why is my data at risk ???
I thought Hetzner was one of the most serious and reputable providers ...



Thanks for your feedback, even if it's disappointing and negative on my expectations.