Hp Microserver Gen8 + VMware ESXI 6 = "no freenas"

[Stefan Grönberg]

Hi. i have this Hp MicroServer Gen 8. with 16 GB of ram.
running VMWare ESXi (the free stuff).
When i install freenas. i cannot access the web gui part.
The console says "you might wanna try http://10.220.0.14" which i do, but the connection times out.

My ubuntu firefox states this:
The connection has timed out

The server at 10.220.0.14 is taking too long to respond.

The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few moments.
If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network connection.
If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.

Im not sure whats wrong, this is a FRESH installed freenas, No changes to config made yet..

 

[gpsguy]

Are you running FreeNAS as a guest under ESXi? How much RAM did you give it? You need to give it at least 8GB.

Note, hopefully you are just using a FreeNAS VM for testing purposes. We don't recommend using it in production. If you need to use it in production - read the stickies and follow them to a T. If not make sure you have adequate backups.


Sent from my phone

 

[Stefan Grönberg]

Are you running FreeNAS as a guest under ESXi? How much RAM did you give it? You need to give it at least 8GB.

Note, hopefully you are just using a FreeNAS VM for testing purposes. We don't recommend using it in production. If you need to use it in production - read the stickies and follow them to a T. If not make sure you have adequate backups.


Sent from my phone

Hi kind gpsguy.

ATM, my current freenas doesnt work "for anything".
I *WAS* hopening(it this a word?) that i could use freenas as a iscsi target.
I was trying to use this freenas vm guest as the iscsi target.
I have given the freenas vm guest 8192 MB of ram of the 16 GB max the system have.
and accordingly to stats of esxi.. i have NOT over provisioned, and have around 4GB ram un-used atm.
the server has *NO* swap what so ever, if thats a problem.

My freenas guest have a 60GB guest-size, PLUS a 3 TB of extra storage that IS intended to be storage of iscsi.
All are Thick Provisioned on the server.

But i cannot even connect to the default freenas webgui after a succesfull(?) installation.

Afaik. This VM booted from bios and not UEFI (efi was grayed out in options).

 

[Stefan Grönberg]

If anyone wounders. i used FreeNAS-9.3.STABLE-20150922158.iso to install this vm guest.

 

[tvsjr]

First, trying to run a minimum-8GB app on a VM host with only 16GB RAM seems pointless. After the vSphere overhead, and the per-VM overhead, you might end up with an additional 6GB of memory to assign to another VM. And that's giving FreeNAS the minimum.

Second, are you passing some sort of HBA through to the FreeNAS VM? ZFS likes seeing bare metal... not abstracted storage.

 

[Arwen]

Some people here make a point that it's generally helpful to know VMware BEFORE you
attempt to virtualize FreeNAS. Do you? (No dis-respect intended if you do.)

So, as a test, use the server as a bare metal for FreeNAS. Get comfortable with FreeNAS.
Then use the server as a VMware host with a simple Linux or FreeBSD client.
Or swap those 2 steps.

Last, whence you have both concepts down, THEN try virtualizing FreeNAS.

As gpsguy pointed out. Make sure you have backups, and which you have clear details
of how to perform the restore(s). Some people who virtualize FreeNAS get bit by a minor
detail, but end up loosing their ZFS pool :-(.

 

[toadman]

There is not enough information to diagnose the problem. Because the OP can see the FreeNAS VM console, and it's outputting an IP for the GUI, it appears the VM boots just fine.

From there it's a bit of a mystery. How is networking (switches, etc) set up on ESXi? What network was assigned? Is that network working for other VMs and/or physical boxes? How was the FreeNAS networking configured? DHCP? If yes, what is handing out the leases?

Other questions arise. The Freenas guest needs 8GB vs. 60GB. How is the 3TB presented to the Freenas VM? More importantly, why are you wanting to use Freenas vs. just using a local datastore?