FreeNAS use as VMWare 6 datastore at my house

[SCSIraidGURU]

I have a HP DL360e Gen8 server with 12 cores, 96GB of RAM, P222 SAS RAID controller with two RAID 1 1TB arrays, 4 x 1 TB 7.2K SAS drives. The server has Gbps NICs. I have VMWare 6 U3 installed on the SD card on the motherboard. I want to build an external datastore for backups using iSCSI. I have an old workstation box that I can put a SATA RAID controller in it to do RAID 1+0 on with WD Black drives. How can I use FreeNAS to do this?

I don't need performance like in my data center I run. The RAID 1 arrays on the HP DL360e Gen8 are fast. I use eSATA on my workstation with VEAAM to backup the VMs at 106 MB/s. I am just looking for extra storage to move backups to.

This server is for my Cisco CCNP certification. I have Cisco Virtual Lab on it running in a Linux VM. I have two WordPress servers: One on CentOS 7 and Ubuntu 16.04.5, I am working on my CompTIA Linux+ certification. VMWare 6 Essentials Kits 6 CPU license to backup everything. This weekend I am doing a Syslog server. I did two RAID 1 arrays each as a datastore.

https://wp.scsiraidguru.com is my technical web site.

I was told about FreeNAS from a Fortinet engineer helping me with my Fortinet 60E firewall. He mentioned FreeNAS and other cool things to try.

 

[Chris Moore]

I can put a SATA RAID controller in it to do RAID 1+0 on with WD Black drives. How can I use FreeNAS to do this?

FreeNAS does not use hardware RAID. Throw those SATA RAID controllers in the garbage, where they belong.

 

[joeschmuck]

I have an old workstation box that I can put a SATA RAID controller in it to do RAID 1+0 on with WD Black drives. How can I use FreeNAS to do this?

You don't. FreeNAS does not use RAID controllers unless they have been flashed to IT mode. I highley recommend that you read up on FreeNAS and the hardware requirements, then read the User Guide and then run up a VM of FreeNAS to play with it and make it work. If you have VMWare already running then you should be able to handle FreeNAS with no issues.

 

[SCSIraidGURU]

I started reading all your documentation on it. I was just going to post about dropping the plans for a RAID controller. Can I use the onboard RAID 1+0 for FreeNAS as a VMWare datastore using iSCSI?

 

[joeschmuck]

I started reading all your documentation on it. I was just going to post about dropping the plans for a RAID controller. Can I use the onboard RAID 1+0 for FreeNAS as a VMWare datastore using iSCSI?

No, the onboard controller is a software raid.

 

[SCSIraidGURU]

Any RAID options for 4 x 4TB hard drives? Where is the user guides and hardware requirement guides? What 4 drive hardware device do you have?

 

[Chris Moore]

Any RAID options for 4 x 4TB hard drives?

If you read the documentation about FreeNAS, you will find that FreeNAS uses ZFS for the file system and mapping multiple drives into various types of software RAID is a function of the file system. There is no need for any sort of hardware RAID because it is handled by the file system. FreeNAS needs unencumbered access directly to the drive with no junk getting in the way.

 

[Chris Moore]

Where is the user guides and hardware requirement guides?

Hardware Requirements
http://www.freenas.org/hardware-requirements/

Did you read the manual?
http://doc.freenas.org/11/freenas.html

Updated Forum Rules 4/11/17
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/updated-forum-rules-4-11-17.45124/

Slideshow explaining VDev, zpool, ZIL and L2ARC
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

Terminology and Abbreviations Primer
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/terminology-and-abbreviations-primer.28174/

FreeNAS® Quick Hardware Guide
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/freenas®-quick-hardware-guide.7/

Hardware Recommendations Guide Rev 1e) 2017-05-06
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/hardware-recommendations-guide.12/

 

[Chris Moore]

What 4 drive hardware device do you have?

Not sure what this is about. If the system board of the workstation you want to use has four plain old SATA ports with NO kind of hardware or fake RAID enabled, FreeNAS will be able to see the drives and make a storage pool on those drives. You have options with four drives of putting two mirrors in a pool together or you can make a RAIDz1 or RAIDz2 pool depending on the redundancy factor you want and amount of storage you need.

 

[Chris Moore]

PS. I use a SAS HBA in my home server connected to two 24 port SAS expander backplanes and FreeNAS has direct access to all 48 drives. I have carved those drives into four separate storage pools, two using RAIDz2 (similar to RAID-6), one using RAIDz1 (similar to RAID-5) and one pool of mirror vdevs (striped mirrors, similar to RAID-10) and there is no hardware RAID required because the file system, ZFS, handles it all.

 

[SCSIraidGURU]

Interesting, ZFS. I haven't had time to play with that yet in CentOS 7 or Ubuntu. Thank you for all the links. I will start reading them. I am working on my CompTiA Linux+ certification so I read about ZFS.

This is for my home not my data center. My data center has dual channel fiber SANs.

So I am looking for something that will work over Gbps with VMWare 6. I started reading your hardware guide. I don't need to place $4000+ in server boards, Xeons, ECC, etc. on this. If I was going to spend over $2000, I would just get a refurbished HP 4U server with a SAS RAID cached controller and do SAS RAID 10 with two spares. I could just do the datastores on it.

I was looking for inexpensive and adequate for a iSCSI datastore. I did consider a device for 4 drives. However, I have a VMWare Essentials Kit license that could do two more servers. I was looking for drop into one of my existing boxes. Use either onboard SATA or a PCIe SATA controller. I wasn't going to give more than 8GB of RAM. Something that could sustain Gbps pipe speed. I will use WD Black drives for performance. I am not expecting over 120 Mbps transfers.

 

[SCSIraidGURU]

Chris, thanks for all the posts. I saw them popping up as I was texting. I really do appreciate it. I have been doing SCSI and SAS for 30+ years. I started in 1985 on SCSI-I hard drives.

 

[SCSIraidGURU]

PS. I use a SAS HBA in my home server connected to two 24 port SAS expander backplanes and FreeNAS has direct access to all 48 drives. I have carved those drives into four separate storage pools, two using RAIDz2 (similar to RAID-6), one using RAIDz1 (similar to RAID-5) and one pool of mirror vdevs (striped mirrors, similar to RAID-10) and there is no hardware RAID required because the file system, ZFS, handles it all.

That is some serious hardware. My Windows 7 workstation has an LSI Logic 8708EM2 SAS RAID controller with 128 MB battery backup cache and two 15K Cheetah SAS drives in RAID 1. I have two 10K SAS Drives in RAID 1 for my target array and swapping.

 

[SCSIraidGURU]

So do I need 5 hard drives? One for FreeNAS and 4 drives for the datastores?

 

[rvassar]

FreeNAS requires 8Gb RAM as a minimum. ECC RAM is a really good idea, and you don't need a Xeon to use ECC memory. I picked up a used SuperMicro motherboard and paired it up with a i3 Sandy Bridge proc for less than $75. The i3's & G-series Pentiums usually support ECC. The i5's do not.

 

[rvassar]

So do I need 5 hard drives? One for FreeNAS and 4 drives for the datastores?

You can boot off a USB thumb drive. I haven't had very good luck with them, but others do. I use a cheap $20 on sale SATA SSD.

 

[Chris Moore]

My Windows 7 workstation

Is this what you want to convert into a NAS? FreeNAS does not run as an application inside Windows, it is a BSD Unix based appliance that would (ideally) be the only operating system installed on the system.

has an LSI Logic 8708EM2 SAS RAID controller with 128 MB battery backup cache

You can't use that with FreeNAS.

The last hardware RAID controller I used is on eBay now for sale:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/253787410623?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
It has been up for sale for about six months now. I keep dropping the price and relisting it, but nobody wants it. I sure don't. I don't use them for anything if I can avoid it.
Unfortunately, I have some Windows systems at work that came from Dell with hardware RAID controllers. No real choice but to use them the way they are, but we won't be buying any more. All our storage is moving to ZFS and we just ordered a pair of new servers with a little over a petabyte of storage between them. One is supposed to arrive by the end of the week and the other should be arriving a couple weeks later.

two 15K Cheetah SAS drives in RAID 1. I have two 10K SAS Drives in RAID 1 for my target array and swapping.

I guess this is four drives total for storage? Are you saying that you want two separate storage pools each configured as a mirror?
You will need a SAS controller to work with SAS drives. Something like this should do it:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-H220-6G...0-IT-Mode-for-ZFS-FreeNAS-unRAID/162862201664

So do I need 5 hard drives? One for FreeNAS and 4 drives for the datastores?

FreeNAS can run from a USB stick, kind of like ESXi, but it can be installed to a hard drive too. What ever drive you use for the boot drive is dedicated exclusively to FreeNAS boot, although you can use that drive for storing the system dataset and logs, if it is a high endurance drive, not a USB stick.

 

[Chris Moore]

PS. Any data on the drives will be destroyed when ZFS repartitions the drives.

 

[SCSIraidGURU]

The active VMs are on my HP DL360e Gen8. This was to push the VM backups to only. I wasn't going to run anything live on this iSCSI. I was extra storage and to play with iSCSI for VMWare VCP exam. I have an old dual Xeon Supermicro board with E5430s and 16GB of ECC on it. It is a power hog with noisy fans at 230W. I have an Intel dual core CPU that I could put 8 GB on. Runs quiet at 96W. It is just for my use.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

You can boot off a USB thumb drive. I haven't had very good luck with them, but others do. I use a cheap $20 on sale SATA SSD.

If you use thumb drives, make sure to buy USB 2 ones. I learned that most if not all USB 3 drives are not capable of continuous operation. The last couple that failed in my setup got so hot the metal encasing bulged.

I bought a pair of these:
https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B005FYNSZA/

No problems, since.

Patrick