New to FreeNAS, diskless installation and setup

[Jailer]

The users here have provided you with plenty of options to attempt to meet your goal. It seems as though you need to do a bit more reading and research to help you understand exactly what FreeNAS is and what it is not. Take a look a couple of links that may help you to get a better understanding of how FreeNAS works.

ZFS Primer
Slideshow explaining VDev, zpool, ZIL and L2ARC for noobs!

 

[snaptec]

So how would you do backups to external drives then?

I use a separate Linux Machine mit Hot Swap Cases

Not sure what you mean by this. The box needs to have access to usb (back up certain partitions to usb external drive only), but certain users on the box should be banned usb access. The usb drives won't be shares... just backup targets. A script will mount the device (ntfs), perform rsync, and umount the device. The script will be called by a cron job as per the schedule set out below for each partition.

Please... read the manual, writing to NTFS won't work.

Perhaps my misuse of the vdev terminology (pointed out by depasseg) is causing some confusion.
Using traditional terminology I know:
4 disks in RAID6 equivalent = 12 Tb of usable space.
This divided into the 5 partitions mentioned = space on the NAS.
Partition 1 (0.5Tb) gets rsync'd to both usb externals and the off-site machine once an hour
Partition 2 (0.5Tb) gets rsync'd to both usb externals and the off-site machine twice a day
Partition 3 (0.5Tb) gets rsync'd to only one usb externals and the off-site machine once a day
Partition 4 (7.0Tb) gets rsync'd to only the off-site machine
Partition 5 (3.5) doesn't get rsync'd

Partition sizes set to accommodate the relevant external backup target sizes.

To be clear:
4 disk RAIDZ2 with 6 TB HDDs will give you about 12 TB where around 8-10TB are usable. Don't fill up the pool too much.
Every Partition is a Dataset. You can set quotas on them if you don't want to grow them beyond your limits.

If no good, how would you achieve backup to external requirements?

Through ZFS replication, rsync or hot swap bays on another server

Some test VMs used infrequently (around 4 hrs / month average use), running on any vm app available.
Primarily to test new software under multiple OS (Solaris, Oracle Linux, Windows 2012 Server).
Can run the app on the client desktop and just have the vmdks hosted on the nas if hosting on the nas is going to be a problem, but would imagine that will run very slow.

Run a hypervisor on your desktop will work. Speed will depend on bandwidth.
I have some FN for VM storage, with mirrored vdevs, this is blazing fast.

Perhaps my misuse of this terminology has caused some confusion... I meant the equivalent of partition under ZFS... whatever that may be. Apologies for the confusion and my ignorance.

It would help if you use the right terminology for understanding what you want

 

[depasseg]

Partition sizes set to accommodate the relevant external backup target sizes.

As was mentioned by Jailer, do some more reading on ZFS. There isn't a way of partitioning, in the traditional sense. You can create datasets, which are similar to folders with some special capabilities (like taking snapshots, replicating, etc).

If no good, how would you achieve backup to external requirements?

Some people have had luck with eSATA enclosures.

 

[danb35]

On the external hard drives issue, it's been discussed back and forth quite a bit. As far as I'm concerned, USB is fine for an external drive that's going to see temporary use, like as a backup destination. eSATA is better, but USB is fine. I certainly wouldn't trust it for long-term stability, though.

 

[Stux]

The question isn't about whether SD is appropriate, but how I can have all of the operational files on the boot volume and fully configure it without the storage volumes being installed.

You just do it. It's easy.

 

[pirateghost]

You just do it. It's easy.

But you can't configure any shares, which is one of those "non-negotiable" requirements

 

[Stux]

But you can't configure any shares, which is one of those "non-negotiable" requirements

Sure you can. They just won't work.

 

[pirateghost]

Sure you can. They just won't work.

If you have no volume mounted, there is no directory to share...

 

[Stux]

If you have no volume mounted, there is no directory to share...

I seem to recall being able to type in a path to share, whether or not the path was valid.

Also you can set it up with a dummy pool made out of text files. And then erase it if you want.

Comes back to just f*ing do it.

 

[VladTepes]

Stux / pirateghost I think you may be talking at crossed purposes.

My interpretation (stop me if I am wrong) is that pirate you are speaking re the GUI and Stux may be thinking of command line stuff?

 

[Stux]

The point is, FreeNAS will function just fine (if somewhat pointlessly) without a pool.

You can substitute one pool for another as long as the new pool is renamed to match the original pool.

You can rename a pool by unmounting it in the GUI, then remounting it with a rename in the cli, and then unmounting it and remounting with the GUI.

I'm fairly certain you can do what you want, you just need to do it