hardware or software raid.

[N0nick]

Server HP ML150 GEn9
8 x 2 TB Disks.
Should i create the raid on the server or just use JBOD and create a raid with Freenas?
Freenas will be installed on esxi environment

grts N

 

[Mirfster]

Virtualization of FreeNas (guess I should start calling it TrueNas Core now), adds much more complexity. That being said, it is very possible to accomplish (I run many instances as a VM in ESXi).

You should pass through HBA(s), not a RAID Card, to the TrueNas Core VM so it has direct access to the drives you are wanting to use with TrueNAS.

Now I am speaking of the actual drives you are using within and not the Drive(s) that you will be installing TrueNas on; that can be a Virtual Disk in the ESXi DataStore.

Confused yet? If so, I would highly recommend that you do further reading on the many threads regarding it in the forums.

Here is a screenshot of one of my instances for reference:

 

[Scharbag]

Server HP ML150 GEn9
8 x 2 TB Disks.
Should i create the raid on the server or just use JBOD and create a raid with Freenas?
Freenas will be installed on esxi environment

grts N

You NEVER want to use a hardware RAID card with ZFS - ZFS is meant to access individual drives.

There are some good help pages that detail how to run FreeNAS within ESXi successfully. This one is a great guide.

I have been running FreeNAS on ESXi for years with great success. I passthrough 2 9211-8i HBA cards to the FreeNAS system. This then presents the drives directly to FreeNAS. I then create NFS shares and present those to ESXi to allow me to run a plethora of other virtual systems.

If you want to use a hardware RAID, ZFS is not a good option.

Cheers,