freenas esx RDM issue

[esking]

When I am trying to setup rdm for esx, everything goes fine.
I tried map these disk with rdm into a windows server 2008 vm, and there are works.

The interesting issue is I can find disks in freenas View Disks tab, but I could see disks in available disks. This really make me confuse. Can someone help me?

BTW
da1 is 500g
da2 and da3 are seagate 2T

 

[cyberjock]

Before you get too far, be warned.. RDM is a very very bad idea except for testing. Any data on the RDM disks can suddenly be gone without warning(we had a case last week). In fact, I'm trying to help someone recover their data because they used RDM and while trying to add an UPS to the server the server was unplugged without being shutdown. The data was mission critical and I'm running out of ideas for recovery. :(

There was a heated discussion over RDM just a week or two ago... lol.

http://forums.freenas.org/threads/p...duction-as-a-virtual-machine.12484/#post58364

That thread was made because of the high incident rate for problems with those issues. Buyer Beware!

And if you consult the FreeNAS guide you shouldn't be using FreeNAS without at least 8GB of RAM. Otherwise FreeNAS becomes unstable(see the first paragraph for how nasty things can get from 1 improper shutdown). Many people have weird unexplainable issues with less than the necessary RAM.

 

[esking]

Thank your for your kindly advice.
Here is my design, what I have is only one hardware platform. And I definitely need freenas to provide different shares for multi types of OS and ESX for vms.
Due to RDM is not that reliable, do you have any good idea to help me out?

 

[pirateghost]

Why do you think you NEED FreeNAS to do this? When you virtualize, unless you do it correctly, you lose out on some of FreeNAS's best features.

at this point, you could use VMDKs with any OS and share your files out that way. Utilizing a virtualized FreeNAS to host the datastore is kind of silly.

 

[esking]

Sorry, I made a mistake. I want freenas to take over and secure my data, and share them to guest OS. FreeNAS take the whole respsonibilty of data security, and guest OS just access to it.
VMDK doesn't support raid and that file system I am not familiar with. Just like you put everthing in a box, but you dont know how to open it.

 

[cyberjock]

Due to RDM is not that reliable, do you have any good idea to help me out?

Yes. Read the sticky http://forums.freenas.org/threads/p...nas-in-production-as-a-virtual-machine.12484/

Then either go with VT-d or use FreeNAS on bare metal.

 

[jgreco]

And be aware that point six in that sticky is something you'll bang into. Probably OK if you don't actually require your ESXi box to reboot automatically (like a lab box or something). Expect that you might end up manually logging in and hitting it with a stick a few times to get the FreeNAS VM up and then have it try again to mount datastores.

 

[esking]

And be aware that point six in that sticky is something you'll bang into. Probably OK if you don't actually require your ESXi box to reboot automatically (like a lab box or something). Expect that you might end up manually logging in and hitting it with a stick a few times to get the FreeNAS VM up and then have it try again to mount datastores.

Thank you for your advice. I am deal it with ESX automatic start up sequence. FreeNAS is always the first VM need to be start.

 

[jgreco]

Yeah, uh, no, that'll be a fail. It doesn't work that way.

 

[esking]

Can you tell me why?

 

[jgreco]

Yes, I explained it in point six in that sticky, which is why I even referenced that in bold. But you really want to read the whole post, because it'll help outline various significant issues that you will face and may not have considered/been aware of/etc.

 

[cyberjock]

Because you'll have to have the datastore to boot FreeNAS. But FreeNAS stores the datastore. It's a "chicken and the egg" problem.

 

[esking]

OK. I got it. From my drawing you may notice that I have one 128G SSD only for ESX use as datastore. I installed all guest OSs in this SSD.
FreeNAS is taking responsibility for all other disks to provide storage services for guest OS.
So I think I have no problem here. Am I right?

 

[jgreco]

Yes, that works. At least as far as ESXi goes. Your other VM's might not like it if the NFS server hasn't started but ESXi startup sequencing can help you there.