SOLVED TrueNAS as a dumb switch, possible?

[tio]

I have a new server setup with twin onboard 10Gbe RJ45 connections. I have a host machine that serves data via a single 10GB rj45 and also have a plex jail on the TrueNAS server.

My question is, can i somehow connect the host machine directly to the new TrueNAS box via Cat 7 and use the other port to then connect to the router to still gain DHCP and serve Its to the jails? I want to just do backups and data transfer via the 10GBE connection to the TrueNAS box and also get data from the router thats to the server as well. Basically a dumb switch. Id prefer to save myself £150 to not get a 10GBE switch if its possible.

SFP isn't possible as i have a Mac Mini with integrated 10Gbe so don't want to go down that route if possible either as its more expense.

 

[Heracles]

can i somehow connect the host machine directly to the new TrueNAS box via Cat 7 and use the other port to then connect to the router to still gain DHCP and serve Its to the jails?

Yes but because it is possible does not mean it is recommended.

Does your pool has a 10G read / write capacity to saturate such a bandwidth ?
Are you streaming enough videos in parallel to saturate a 1G link ?
When you do your backups, how much data are you transferring ?

TrueNAS is meant to be a storage appliance, not a network appliance. It would be appealing to know that you are running at 10G instead of 1, but does this deserve the pain to force TrueNAS into something it is not meant to be ? I do not think so and do not recommend you to do it. Even if you should insist doing it, you would be better to move your DHCP service to TrueNAS and have your actual networking centered on it instead of having layer 2 on TrueNAS and layer 3 on your router.

 

[Redcoat]

My question is, can i somehow connect the host machine directly to the new TrueNAS box via Cat 7 and use the other port to then connect to the router to still gain DHCP and serve Its to the jails?

Yes, just assign static addresses on a different subnet to the host and Truenas "direct link" NICs..

EDIT - Sorry, I missed the "data from the router" piece - I focused just on the backup ... Patrick surely has it below!

 

[tio]

Yes, just assign static addresses on a different subnet to the host and Truenas "direct link" NICs..

Terribly sorry this is slightly hard for me to comprehend at the moment, any how to guides on this please?

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

My question is, can i somehow connect the host machine directly to the new TrueNAS box via Cat 7 and use the other port to then connect to the router to still gain DHCP and serve Its to the jails? I want to just do backups and data transfer via the 10GBE connection to the TrueNAS box and also get data from the router thats to the server as well. Basically a dumb switch. Id prefer to save myself £150 to not get a 10GBE switch if its possible.

Yes you can.

• Disable autostart for all jails if you already have some configured and reboot.
• Disable hardware offloading for all physical interfaces. This is important!
• Create a bridge interface named "bridge0" with both physical interfaces as members.
• Test and save.
• Remove the IP configuration from your physical interface.
• Put IP configuration on bridge interface instead.
• Test and save.
• Reboot for good measure.
• Re-enable and start jails.

 

[tio]

Yes but because it is possible does not mean it is recommended.

Does your pool has a 10G read / write capacity to saturate such a bandwidth ?
Are you streaming enough videos in parallel to saturate a 1G link ?
When you do your backups, how much data are you transferring ?

TrueNAS is meant to be a storage appliance, not a network appliance. It would be appealing to know that you are running at 10G instead of 1, but does this deserve the pain to force TrueNAS into something it is not meant to be ? I do not think so and do not recommend you to do it. Even if you should insist doing it, you would be better to move your DHCP service to TrueNAS and have your actual networking centered on it instead of having layer 2 on TrueNAS and layer 3 on your router.

My pool has a capacity to not fully saturate 10GB, its currently at approximately 600MBPS so there is some headroom.

Streaming isn't saturating anything what so ever.

Full backups are done every 3 months from the server which is about 8tb of data and then it is version controlled and compared against the last dataset backup to check for errors or missing files. Incremental's are done daily.

 

[tio]

Yes you can.

• Disable autostart for all jails if you already have some configured and reboot.
• Disable hardware offloading for all physical interfaces. This is important!
• Create a bridge interface named "bridge0" with both physical interfaces as members.
• Test and save.
• Remove the IP configuration from your physical interface.
• Put IP configuration on bridge interface instead.
• Test and save.
• Reboot for good measure.
• Re-enable and start jails.

Hi Patrick, thank you for this very detailed reply. BY IP configuration, im working on the assumption this is standard DHCP IP requests and not a manually inserted IP?

I will give this a try and hopefully is well :).

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

And to my more experienced peers here: as soon as a user is creating jails and/or VMs, everything goes through the bridge interface, anyway! So why not use all ports available on an MB - I have done this for years. Single Cat5 from SOHO router to the cupboard where printer and NAS are located. Cat5 into NAS, short one from NAS to printer ...

People are facing constraints like these in small environments all the time, so please don't discourage use of perfectly well supported features.
Once some power user wants to have separate interfaces for jails and sharing and a dozen VLANs and stuff ... things get complicated, but this is not the case here. With a single bridge named bridge0 and having the single IP interface with default route, everything is going to work just fine in the standard setup ...

Kind regards,
Patrick

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Hi Patrick, thank you for this very detailed reply. BY IP configuration, im working on the assumption this is standard DHCP IP requests and not a manually inserted IP?

It is whatever you have on your single physical at the moment. If it's set to DHCP, then remove that and set the bridge to DHCP. If it's manual address, remove that and put the manual address on the bridge instead.

You are turning your physical interfaces into a dumb switch as you requested. Dumb switches don't have IP addresses. Hence all IP configuration goes on the new bridge interface.

I would recommend manual static addressing for a server system like TrueNAS. Make sure to also put default gateway and DNS server into Network > Global Settings.

 

[tio]

It is whatever you have on your single physical at the moment. If it's set to DHCP, then remove that and set the bridge to DHCP. If it's manual address, remove that and put the manual address on the bridge instead.

You are turning your physical interfaces into a dumb switch as you requested. Dumb switches don't have IP addresses. Hence all IP configuration goes on the new bridge interface.

I would recommend manual static addressing for a server system like TrueNAS. Make sure to also put default gateway and DNS server into Network > Global Settings.

Again, i really appreciate your time and expertise on this subject. Thank you very much.

 

[IOSonic]

I used to do something similar (i.e., briding NIC interfaces) on an old server that I'd converted into a pfsense box. Just be aware that the switching is being done in software at that point and the speed won't be line-rate. In my case, it was close enough that I didn't care.