Freenas on VMware Workstation

[marcus2704]

I am thinking of building a Freenas VM using VMware Workstation 12, because I do not have a separate physical worksation I can dedicate. The Freenas VM would be used as storage for approx 10TB of media files, for use with my Plex server.

I have been trying out Windows Storage Spaces (Parity) but the performance is not acceptable, together with the rather odd way Microsoft implement and design the feature.

I am very keen to ensure my data can survive a disk failure, and am considering using ZFS.

I have 4 x 4TB SATA disks, can I present these directly to Freenas or would I need to create a virtual disk within VMware Workstation and present them via that method instead?

I intend to create 4 x virtual disks (situating one per physical drive) and then create a ZFS array within Freenas - would this be a redundant solution were I to lose a single 4TB disk for example?

 

[jgreco]

I am thinking of building a Freenas VM using VMware Workstation 12, because I do not have a separate physical worksation I can dedicate. The Freenas VM would be used as storage for approx 10TB of media files, for use with my Plex server.

I have been trying out Windows Storage Spaces (Parity) but the performance is not acceptable, together with the rather odd way Microsoft implement and design the feature.

I am very keen to ensure my data can survive a disk failure, and am considering using ZFS.

I have 4 x 4TB SATA disks, can I present these directly to Freenas or would I need to create a virtual disk within VMware Workstation and present them via that method instead?

I intend to create 4 x virtual disks (situating one per physical drive) and then create a ZFS array within Freenas - would this be a redundant solution were I to lose a single 4TB disk for example?

This usually doesn't lead to the happy-land that users imagine. https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...nas-in-production-as-a-virtual-machine.12484/

The use of Workstation means you'd be forced to do the virtual disk layout you describe, which is at least *better* than the pessimistic configurations people usually come in with, and is a little bit closer to https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ative-for-those-seeking-virtualization.26095/ but still violates Key Concept 1. This has the potential to go sideways for you when something goes awry.

 

[gpsguy]

I was thinking along the same lines.

Windows updates, or it hung and one's gotta use the big red switch.

This has the potential to go sideways for you when something goes awry.

 

[marcus2704]

I understand, thanks for your reply. Not the ideal setup then.

I could stick with Storage Spaces, the read performance is ok whilst the write performance is very lacking using Parity option, but it is a simpler solution and easily transportable.

 

[jgreco]

I understand, thanks for your reply. Not the ideal setup then.

Yeah, I'm sorry, that's my conclusion at least. We're obviously fans of FreeNAS here, but we also realize that there's a lot of hazards to your data if FreeNAS isn't done right, and we really don't like suggesting that you do risky things.