no disc spin down with running Virtual Machines

[alex902]

Hello,

I have installed successfully FreeNAS-11.3-RELEASE on a Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3470 CPU @ 3.20GHz with 16 Giga RAM on a SSD. 3 discs form a ZFS Array. I installed a virtual machine (win 10) and if the vm is running the spin down of the ZFS discs never happen (but it works if the vm is down). If I look at the task manager of Win 10 I can not see any disc activity. Furthermore it is just a blank Win 10 installation without any other program installed. So I think the bhyve does "something".

Does someone have the same problem or is it possible to find the root of the disc activity?

Thanks in advance

Alex902

 

[alex902]

Hi again,

I did some research but was not very successful... but found out, that also the cpu is busy due to bhyve. Does this help to guide me to the root cause and hopefully a solution?
It is not (only) the wasted energy I would like to reduce it is also the sound of three discs I would like to reduce :).

Thanks in advance

Alex 902

 

[SweetAndLow]

Well first of all most people do not spin down their drives. It causes excessive wear and pre mature failure of the drives. It can also be argued that spin up of those drives uses more power than just constantly running.

Secondly bhyve will probably always cause your disks to be spinning. The VM will always be doing something. Even if the os is idle.

Third, your system dateset is on your pool most likely and that will keep your drives spinning from logs getting written and reporting data.

Over all don't worry about your drives spinning down, you are focusing on the wrong thing. Make sure you have scrubs, smart tests and emails reports set correctly.