How to (1Dataset)x(1VM)

[vitaprimo]

I was about to move some VMs from Zvols to Datasets (iSCSI > NFS) when I realized I don't have any NFS shares--just in case there's something new to learn I got myself to the docu and this caught my eye:

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I had no plans on deduplicating anything but am I curious about that. How does that work? Do I have to manually create a dataset per VM? Would that also mean, exporting the dataset, import the datastore each time?? Or…is it automated like vVols/vSAN? I sounds exactly like either of those, kinda--vSAN would be distributed.

If it is automated, this have be the best feature of FreeNAS hands down.

 

[Samuel Tai]

@Stilez has a resource just for your questions:

My experiments in building a home server capable of handling fast + consistent deduplication

AIM: To help people looking at deduplication on TrueNAS 12+, what I've found on the way making it work on mine. On sustained mixed loads, such as 50GB+ file copies and multiple transfers, using TrueNAS 12 with a deduped pool and default config...

www.ixsystems.com

However, this is a very RAM-intensive feature, and you shouldn't consider it unless you have at least 256 GB of RAM.

What the tip refers to is creating a master dataset, snapshotting the master, and cloning the snapshot to provide to each VM as its own NFS share.