Switch from RDM to PCI Passthrough

[moosport]

Is there a way to switch from RDM to PCI passthrough without destroying the volume?

I do have the data backed up. Looking for a cleaner solution.

 

[cyberjock]

Moved to off-topic as this isn't a FreeNAS question.

 

[cyberjock]

In theory if you simply go to PCI passthrough it should "just work". But you should be very wary of even be considering this as changing over could make the pool unmountable. So you should have a complete backup before you start! I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if you went to PCI passthrough and suddenly the pool never worked again. BACKUPS BACKUPS BACKUPS!

 

[moosport]

thanks! When building the NAS, i went through a couple reinstall and the pool survived. This is with RDM. My new SATA controller does not seem to be recognized by 8.31 but it is reported to be support from 9.1 onwards.

I'm going to upgrade prior to configuring the passthrough.

 

[cyberjock]

Upgrading FreeNAS is designed to work properly. That's "by design". However, there's zero support for RDM and PCIe passthrough "by design" with FreeNAS. Experience shows that RDM is wholly dangerous and it's playing with fire. PCIe passthrough is not "designed" for FreeNAS, which is why there's warnings everything that virtualizing FreeNAS is at your own risk and your own peril. If you make a thread complaining about a problem related to VMs, we'll all point our finger and laugh at you because you didn't listen to the warnings. We aren't overly interested in troubleshooting the problems related to virtualizing FreeNAS. So it is what it is.

*Plenty* of hardware doesn't support PCIe passthrough either. It requires your motherboard to fully support it along with your controller. It also requires the driver for FreeBSD to support the PCIe passthrough properly. And many that claim to support PCIe passthrough exclude FreeBSD. Of all of the controllers I had in my house a year ago, none worked(despite some claiming PCIe passthrough). So if you don't own an M1015, there's a very good chance you'll be forced to buy one(or something else that does work).

Good luck!

 

[moosport]

Thanks for the reminder. I did head down this path knowing all the risks involved. It is mitigated with frequent backups and having more than 2 copies available. The SYBA controller I bought was mentioned in one of thread where someone got it working. It is cheap enough if all else fail I'll pick the M1015.