FreeNAS on ESXi

[Charlie86]

Hi,

My current configuration is 2x16GB USB key for FreeNAS and 5x3TB in RAIDZ for storage with 16GB of RAM. It all works fine, I just want to put current configuration of to virtual machine in ESXi. Is this even possible without losing all configuration of the server and data? I have few jails configured (Logitech media server, apache, Plex, qtorrent.) can this easily be moved to ESXi VM?

My second question is; how can I create image of current configuration of all my setting of FreeNAS and jails to USB key, so if I mess something I can restore my previous config of all settings by just replacing USB boot key.

 

[Mirfster]

Can it be done? Yes. Would it be "easy"? Depends on your level of knowledge/experience with both ESXi and FreeNAS...

Are you planning on the ESXi Server being on an entirely different system?

 

[Charlie86]

Hi,

No ESXi will be on the same system.

Why it is hard to configure? I want to add pfSense to another VM. I was thinking to create VM in FreeNAS but I am not sure if running router&firewall OS is good idea on FreeNAS VM?

 

[Mirfster]

It still is feasible, if you provide a little more information on your current system/setup then a more detailed answer could be given.

So some stuff off the top of my head:

• Is the current system compatible with ESXi?
• Is the CPU capable of handling Virtualization?
• How are the existing drives attached (SATA Ports, HBA, etc.)?
• For this to work properly, you will have to be able to give FreeNAS direct access to the drives
• You will need to allocate (Reserve) memory for the FreeNAS VM (not "shared" memory) so you will need to take that into consideration

There may be more questions, but at least this is a start...

 

[Charlie86]

Hi,

First thank you for all this information.

My system is pretty old HP 8100 CMT with i5-650 proc which is capable of Virtualisation. Google says it should be compatible with ESXi. (I will test that)

All 5 drives are connected to SATA ports.

I can give FreeNAS direct access to drives, pfSense can be on separated USB drive.

System is running with 16GB of RAM (that is max for this motherboard), I am planing to give pfSense 0.5 or max 1GB, so all other RAM will still be available for FreeNAS

 

[usergiven]

Hi,

First thank you for all this information.

My system is pretty old HP 8100 CMT with i5-650 proc which is capable of Virtualisation. Google says it should be compatible with ESXi. (I will test that)

All 5 drives are connected to SATA ports.

I can give FreeNAS direct access to drives, pfSense can be on separated USB drive.

System is running with 16GB of RAM (that is max for this motherboard), I am planing to give pfSense 0.5 or max 1GB, so all other RAM will still be available for FreeNAS

Just a heads up, I virtualize Freenas on ESXI along with pfsense and some other things. Yes the i5-650 does VT-d which allows device pass through (good) but your motherboard from what I can tell doesn't have an HBA which is the hard drive controller and essentially what you would need to passthrough in ESXI to successfully work Freenas without creating additional issues. I may be wrong but I believe if you passthrough each disk directly in ESXI to the freenas vm it can cause problems.

 

[Mirfster]

All 5 drives are connected to SATA ports.

I can give FreeNAS direct access to drives, pfSense can be on separated USB drive.

but your motherboard from what I can tell doesn't have an HBA which is the hard drive controller and essentially what you would need to passthrough in ESXI to successfully work Freenas without creating additional issues.

It may be possible to pass-through the actual SATA Controller built into the Motherboard to the VM (I can for my systems; but do not). However, then the OP would have to ensure that ESXi and the initial DataStore (for ESXi) is housed elsewhere.

While that also could be done on a USB Stick, I would not recommend it since that poor USB Stick would be beat to death in a short time. To resolve that, maybe the OP could use a PCIe mSATA card; but I agree it would be better to just have a HBA (as mentioned by @usergiven) and pass that through to the FreeNAS VM.

 

[Scharbag]

Read this website. Great info on how to virtualize. Applies to an older FreeNAS version but still relevant. There is another post on ESXi 6.5 and Coral that is also helpful here. Between those 2 posts, there is all the info you need to get FreeNAS 11.x running on ESXi.

As already posted, and if you are serious, you should look into a proper HBA controller and pass that through to ESXi using VT-d. ESXi will need to boot from a USB key and then you will need a locally attached storage device to install FreeNAS onto (local datastore). SATA passthrough would preclude you from being able to use any SATA drives to install FreeNAS on.

There may be other ways to skin this cat but I would get an HBA as they are known to work and very reliable.

Cheers,