Run FreeNAS on vSphere to be NFS server to other vSphere hosts?

[ajbrehm]

I am planning to use FreeNAS on a HPE server to act as NFS server for two other HPE servers running vSphere.

Out of curiosity I am wondering if it is possible/makes sense to run FreeNSD virtualised on vSphere as well, using local storage, and still acting as NFS server for the other vSphere hosts. This would also allow running a TrueCommand VM on the same host. All three servers have 4 cores and 32 GB RAM. The entire collection is a test environment at my house with no productive purpose.

Any ideas?

 

[HoneyBadger]

Yes, this will work. There are some specific caveats with running ZFS safely/stably on a hypervisor, which are covered well in the blog post "Yes, You Can Virtualize FreeNAS" here:

TrueNAS enables Container Storage and Kubernetes

The Democratic CSI driver integrates ZFS and TrueNAS into the Kubernetes environment and other container management platforms.

www.ixsystems.com

While this is a "test environment" I would still make sure you look at the "Production" configuration though. The "Non-Production" guidance in the post is more for those who just want to get used to the FreeNAS UI/UX, test out new versions, and to paraphrase, "there's no data you care about." Losing your test environment might not be on the same level as a business losing data, but your time has value as well and I don't imagine you'd be eager to redo all of your hard work - so try to lean towards a "production ready" setup.

You'll also need to consider that whichever host has the local storage will have to give up some resources (2 cores and 16GB, I would say) so that won't be available for use by VMs. Posting the full hardware details of your HPE hosts will help here.

A specific note on the NFS with vSphere piece though - the vSphere NFS client sends its writes as synchronous. The short version is that you'll likely need to deploy a Separate Log Device or "SLOG" otherwise you'll find your hypervisors will have extremely poor performance. (If your disks are all SSDs, though, you may be fine without one.)

Welcome aboard!

 

[ajbrehm]

Thank you, that's very good. I see I made the right choice.

The host is a 4 core CPU with 32 GB of RAM and will run only the FreeNAS VM and a TrueCommand VM and no other VMs ever. (All other VMs should use the NFS provided by the FreeNAS VM.) Alternatively I would install FreeNAS bare metal and use a NFS-based VM for the TrueCommand appliance.

I am also thinking about backups. I currently back up my VMs using a PowerShell script running on a Windows 10 VM which clones each VM while it is running creates a OVA (VM archive) file from the shut-down clone. I am curious whether I can get something to work based on NFS. I can probably clone the VMs and create OVAs from the shut-down clones.

Ironically most (nearly all) of my actual guests are Windows Server. I just couldn't find an more useful NAS than FreeNAS. There are no Windows-based NFS NAS and all of the Linux-based NAS one can buy seem rather unsuitable for my semi-professional purpose. And since I already replaced by few Linux VMs with FreeBSD, it seemed natural to have a BSD-based NAS.

 

[ajbrehm]

I ultimately used a 2-core 8 GB HPE server for TrueNAS with four 2 TB SSDs setup up as two 2 TB ZFS software RAIDs. It works very well.

 

[ramib]

I ultimately used a 2-core 8 GB HPE server for TrueNAS with four 2 TB SSDs setup up as two 2 TB ZFS software RAIDs. It works very well.

I was working with FreeNAS for a long time as VM under VCENTER 6.7 all the devices are used an RDM's so moving them back to a dedicated FreeBSD/FreeNAS is a straightforward if you need in the future

 

[HoneyBadger]

I was working with FreeNAS for a long time as VM under VCENTER 6.7 all the devices are used an RDM's so moving them back to a dedicated FreeBSD/FreeNAS is a straightforward if you need in the future

Careful; while a local RDM should in theory be equal in functionality to passthrough of a PCIe HBA, "theory" and "practice" often diverge especially when VMware is involved. Use of the latter (PCI passthrough) is highly preferred especially when critical data and/or sync writes are in play.

 

[ramib]

Careful; while a local RDM should in theory be equal in functionality to passthrough of a PCIe HBA, "theory" and "practice" often diverge especially when VMware is involved. Use of the latter (PCI passthrough) is highly preferred especially when critical data and/or sync writes are in play.

I have been moving the same disks/pools (disks where created originally on FreeBSD 9) several times from FreeNAS/FreeBSd to RDMS and now again to TrueNAS , no issues so far , but no more this time :)