hotswap drives on virtual enviroment

[mrjoli021]

I have a supermicro server with 8 drives. I am running ESX on the server and FreeNas virtualized I am running the controller in IT mode and passing the HBA to FreeNAS. I have a bad drive in the pool. Would it be OK to just pull the drive out and rebuild it without powering the host down?
According to SuperMicro their servers are hotswapable since I am running this Virtual eventhough the pci passthrough is pointing to the FreeNas not sure if FreeNas supports it.
Any recommendations on replacing the drive without powering the host down?

 

[Elliot Dierksen]

You should still follow the normal FreeNAS recommendations for swapping a failed drive. I don't know how the passthrough will impact things, but you must do that at a minimum (offline the drive, do the physical replacement,replace drive).

 

[danb35]

...and with that said, you should (for a fairly low-confidence value of "should") be able to hot-swap the failing disk following the normal steps.

 

[HoneyBadger]

I am running the controller in IT mode and passing the HBA to FreeNAS.

Follow the standard procedure for replacing a failed drive by referencing the documents at https://doc.freenas.org/ for your installed version, and you will be fine.

Assuming you properly passed the HBA through to your VM as a whole PCI device, the procedure will be the same as on a bare-metal hardware installation, and no extra steps such as shutting down the VM are required.

 

[Turgin]

I would also suggest that you be *sure* that your drive to slot mapping is correct. Depending on your pool configuration and which drive it is you could have a very bad day if you go through all the steps to replace and the drive you pull is not actually the drive you need to pull.