FreeNAS on Debian

[Grimnar]

Hi

So I have been contemplating FreeNAS for a while now. I'm running Debian as of now, and really want to test FreeNAS in a VM.

1) What is the best (easiest, console) VM-manager(?) Virtualbox?
1b) Do I need some special FreeNAS image to do this? (Intel i5, 16gb hw)

Since Debian got some sort of ZFS support, I have installed this addon and are using ZFS on 2 of my disks (GoPro/DSLR media backups)

2) Can I "import" this setup to my FreeNAS-vm? as is? Or do I have to unload them, configure them in FreeNAS and then re-import the data? (when imported, Debian is cut loose from the zfs-disks)

 

[dlavigne]

It is unclear what you are trying to accomplish. If you want to test in a vm, virtualbox works fine and you can just use the .iso image. However, the vm won't use the physical disks, it will instead use whatever virtual disks you create in virtualbox.

If you instead want to use the physical disks on the system, you will need to backup the data, create a pool using the FreeNAS ZFS Volume Manager (which will reformat the disks and nuke Debian), then restore the backed up data to the pool.

 

[Grimnar]

Thanks for the reply.

Let me rephrase:

I have debian running on it's own ext4 system on it's own disk. I have a 2x2TB disks with zfs running on it via zol (zfs on linux).
But as you mention, I still need to nuke the zfs setup I'm running, then make a new one in FreeNAS?
I have successfully setup FreeNAS using Virtualbox, but this was in a gnome enviroment and thus not what I wanted. I really want to run it from my console. Is there a way to run my already setup FreeNAS-vm from console now? ;)

 

[dlavigne]

QEMU is a great CLI virtualization tool. Instructions for use on Debian are here. You should be able to feed it your already created .vdi.

 

[Grimnar]

Thanks, will have a look at it! :)