Practicing Freenas & ESXi setup

[ShimadaRiku]

I've never used freenas or ESXi before. How should I go about learning and practicing? All inside a VM like virtualbox or buy real live parts? I want to install and simulate data disaster recovery scenarios so I am not clueless when things go wrong.

Planning to build:
SuperMicro X10SL7-F with Xeon E3-1240v3
or
Asrock C2750D4I (not sure if i need M1015 HBA for PCI passthrough)
16gb ECC Memory
6x4TB Raidz2

 

[DrKK]

I've never used freenas or ESXi before. How should I go about learning and practicing? All inside a VM like virtualbox or buy real live parts? I want to install and simulate data disaster recovery scenarios so I am not clueless when things go wrong.

Planning to build:
SuperMicro X10SL7-F with Xeon E3-1240v3
or
Asrock C2750D4I (not sure if i need M1015 HBA for PCI passthrough)
16gb ECC Memory
6x4TB Raidz2

I actually did precisely this for 4 weeks before I bought my FreeNAS parts.

I used VMWare Player, made a virtual FreeNAS, and made 4x25GB drives. I practiced making a pool out of them, making datasets out of them, permissions, sharing them out to the network, I simulated drive failures and data corruption, etc. It was only after I understand everything as the virutalized testbed that I went and made a "real" FreeNAS. I think too few people do this. I salute you.


You're on to something sir.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

All inside a VM like virtualbox or buy real live parts?

A VM is a great solution if you have a sufficiently capable machine to run it on. Another option is to buy a bunch of inexpensive used drives and play with those. Another member did this recently and learned a lot.

EDIT: My approach was ad hoc, working my way through a couple of parts-bin toy builds before buying something not entirely unworthy ... but I happen to have a whole bunch of gear laying around.

 

[DrKK]

A VM is a great solution if you have a sufficiently capable machine to run it on.

The implication is that it would be unusual to have such a machine? Robert, I ran mine just fine on a piece of shit AMD Desktop with 8GB of RAM. I think most people's "main desktop" is more than sufficient as a training testbed with virtual hard drives for FreeNAS.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

The implication is that it would be unusual to have such a machine?

No, just a statement of fact. Many desktops still ship with 4GB of RAM, and you can't give all of it to a VM. Many ship with 8GB or more, and will be fine for testing FreeNAS in a VM.

 

[DrKK]

No, just a statement of fact. Many desktops still ship with 4GB of RAM, and you can't give all of it to a VM. Many ship with 8GB or more, and will be fine for testing FreeNAS in a VM.

Well, for the record, I set my VMWare player to like 3GB of RAM, made three or four 30GB (or something) virtual drives, etc., and it was perfectly fine...****FOR TESTING AND LEARNING****

So if anyone out there is thinking about doing this, this is the one case where we say it's OK to go dangerously sub-spec.

 

[Jailer]

I've never messed with esxi (yet) but I built my test rig out of a retired Core 2 Duo desktop with 4GB of RAM. It worked for it's intended purpose and I was able to make all my mistakes on that machine before building my current rig. What was also good is I had become familiar enough with the UI that it took me less than an hour to get everything set up and running once the new machine was built.

A test rig, be it bare metal or virtual, is a very good idea to learn the multitude of options that FreeNAS offers.

 

[sfcredfox]

It might also be worth mentioning that you can get used server gear on ebay for relatively cheap, depending on what that means to you. There's plenty of used SuperMicro and HP enterprise gear out there for a fraction of what a *real* build will be (once you figure out what yours looks like).

 

[ShimadaRiku]

I actually did precisely this for 4 weeks before I bought my FreeNAS parts.

I used VMWare Player, made a virtual FreeNAS, and made 4x25GB drives. I practiced making a pool out of them, making datasets out of them, permissions, sharing them out to the network, I simulated drive failures and data corruption, etc. It was only after I understand everything as the virutalized testbed that I went and made a "real" FreeNAS. I think too few people do this. I salute you.

You're on to something sir.

Thanks, I'll play around in VM environment until I feel ready. Didn't know if there was something VM can't simulate without getting real hardware.

 

[DrKK]

Thanks, I'll play around in VM environment until I feel ready. Didn't know if there was something VM can't simulate without getting real hardware.

No. I mean, to be specific, I used VMWare player for about 3-4 weeks, exclusive, with a FreeNAS image in it, and I felt well-prepared to tackle the real FreeNAS when it was put together. I mean, you get 99% of the feel for configuring shares, permissions, and for setting up zpools in various ways, simulating drive failures, turning on all the various services, etc.

For me, there's no other way to fly---make a VMWare Player VM of FreeNAS, set the networking to NAT, make 6x30GB drives for testing purposes, and set up all the varieties of RAIDs and what not, figure out sharing, turn on the FTP, get familiar with the command line, etc. Best thing you can do.