Problems with transmission/jail-Freenas 9.2 on ESXi 5.5

[depasseg]

In fact you (or FreeNAS, not sure if that's you) do state what requirements are needed for an installation in ESX. There are 5 pages and include screenshots. It just need to say that a requirement is the use of promiscuous mode. Why is that so hard?

There are 280 pages of great technical reference material. Why restrict the sharing a clear requirement as it relates to ESX and instead letting people figure it out on their own?

 

[cyberjock]

First, we give NO requirements, in any form, for running FreeNAS in ESXi. We give some very heavy-handed recommendations, and you can still do all of those things and still lose your data.

Second, we make it *very very* clear that if you can't do those things it's exceedingly dangerous and you are very likely to not know until it's too late.

Now, we do not endorse or even remotely recommend running FreeNAS in a VM. If you do so it's at your own peril.

Third, as soon as we start saying "if you do this then do that and this and that" then people immediately start making the argument that we're endorsing FreeNAS in a VM. That's precisely what we are trying to avoid. We're very heavy-handed with this because we've literally seen dozens of users lose their pools suddenly and without warning. It has been considered more than once for putting together some kind of advanced/hacky guide for making FreeNAS work in a VM in the "safest" (if that is even possible). The problem... everyone things they are an advanced user, they always know better, and they won't lose their data. Why do you think we had dozens and dozens of users that lost their pools? Every one always said the same thing.. they were the exception and they knew better. Next thing they knew they were a statistic.

If you don't like this, that's fine. We're trying to do the best we can with what we have. And we can't (and don't) want to give the impression that virtualizing FreeNAS is a good idea. We've seen lots of lost data and we do NOT like the publicity that comes with someone else losing their pool every other day because they thought they knew better.

Just look at the stickies on how to virtuale. They are locked. Why are they locked? Because we've lost patience with people trying to make recommendations. People show up, throw a dozen or so posts on the forum (maybe provide a recommendation or two) and then promptly disappear. You don't see the dozens of posters that will take us adding info to make things work as our form of endorsement. It's not, and it never will be.

Now, if you want to stick around and tell every soul that shows up virtualizing and having problems with their jails how to setup promiscious mode, feel free. And they can be mad at *you* because you gave them the false sense that things aren't as dire as they actually are.

Remember, we don't even understand the mechanism for why virtualizing FreeNAS is so horrible. We just know it is from watching the dozens of users lose their pools.

 

[depasseg]

Perhaps we are talking about different things. I'm talking about section 2.2.2 of the FreeNAS User Guide. The User Guide has 0 warnings about how dangerous it is to run in a VM. There is even a VMDK and instructions on how to create a VM.

It lists the virtual machine requirements as:
- VM Type is FreeBSD (64-bit)
- at least 2GB of HDD
- at least 2GB of RAM
and an explicit warning to only use 1 CPU: "Under “CPUs”, make sure that only 1 virtual processor is listed, otherwise you will be unable to start any FreeNAS® services. "

And just like there is something unique about FreeNAS (or the underlying FreeBSD) configuration precluding the use of a mulitprocessor VM-guest, I'm suggesting that users are also given this bit of information since it is rather unique (not good or bad, not different from the normal VM).
"You will need to enable promiscuous mode on your virtual switch for Jails to function properly. Click here (http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/mi...nguage=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1004099) for more information."

And, to your point, there should be a HUGE warning at the very beginning of section 2.2.2 stating that the use of FreeNAS in a VM is only for training or other non-production use. Because right now, there is nothing in the ESX section that suggests that running in a VM is bad. (There should also be a warning on the downloads page where the VMDK can be downloaded.)

And in case you missed it, the reason I am going through was so that I could thoroughly configure, test and document what my setup will look like without committing to HW. The production HW is now on order. There is 0 production data in the ESX vm's. They are only there to ensure I could connect to AD, create snapshots, figure out replication, use Crashplan and restore lost files.

 

[cyberjock]

Section 2.2...

FreeNAS can be run inside a virtual environment for development, experimentation, and educational purposes. Please note that running FreeNAS in production as a virtual machine is not recommended. If you decide to use FreeNAS® within a virtual environment, read this post first as it contains useful guidelines for minimizing the risk of losing your data.

The text includes links that obviously don't carry over from my copy/paste. ;)

 

[jgreco]

So basically the manual has a little outdated crap in it. 'Cuz obviously 2GB of RAM is a Horribly Bad Idea(tm) and the only thing I can imagine relating to a single virtual processor might be some of the MSI routing issues that used to (and maybe still do) afflict certain combinations of things; under a fully virtualized (non-VT-d) FreeNAS that isn't a problem, and quite frankly I've been running two cores on ESXi 4.1/FreeNAS 8.3 and four cores on ESXi 5.5/FreeNAS 9.* without a problem in all the time since I wrote the virtualization stickies, I think....

Oh wait. I see, it doesn't actually say 2GB of RAM. It says 2GB for UFS and 4GB for ZFS. That's still not great but quite frankly ZFS on 4GB should be fine (where "fine" is defined as "that should damn well boot and generally work" but not necessarily "you should sleep well knowing ZFS has your precious irreplaceable data safely stowed").

And, to your point, there should be a HUGE warning at the very beginning of section 2.2.2 stating that the use of FreeNAS in a VM is only for training or other non-production use. Because right now, there is nothing in the ESX section that suggests that running in a VM is bad.

I think users are expected to read sections as a whole, not just pick and choose which words or subsections out of a section they'd prefer to read and then claim they weren't told. I know, I know, I come from a state with a long proud history of Frankenstein vetoes, but that doesn't make it right. And Dru, the documentation guru, has conveniently linked to several posts of mine from section 2.2 that discuss virtualization issues in detail.

I should probably dredge up how to edit the user's guide since I see a few other things that ought to be modernized... but alas I have other fires to fight right now.

 

[depasseg]

Ah, I see. In the TOC I saw ESX under USB (I thought that was weird). It's a formatting issue with the TOC (USB is a fourth level subsection - 2.2.1.4, but looks like it is the main heading to ESX), and I missed the main 2.2 Virtualization heading.

I'm willing to help edit if you need a hand.

Thanks,
Greg

 

[cyberjock]

The whole guide is getting a major rework for 9.3. Don't worry, I'll be cleaning up a lot of these weird peculiarities.