Truenas as A VM, not host. Performance issues ?

[Neko77025]

Hello,

First off, I know this is be A oddity.

So, I have A home server , use it for Plex, VMs, Game hosting ect ect. Been using Windows Storage Spaces for years (with out issues). However, had A disk fail and first time Storage Spaces would not rebuild for me ( But no data loss ). So, I wanted to Setup Truenas as VM inside windows .. just to test it out , not even sure if it would work. (Did not want TrueNas as a host becuase it wont do GPU transcoding)

Anyhow .. Have done some test setups. And can get it to work. When I transfer to or from the windows SMB I get full Gigabit 113 MB/s (so network is my bottleneck).

The issue, I am having is .. When I map it as Network Drive and give that info to plex. Play back is crazy bad. Plex shows it almost as Network issues.

Is this A Plex issue, TrueNas issue, User Issue, Usecase issue ?

also, if I do get this working as intended. Am I missing any unforeseen issues ... (is this a bad idea) ?

TrueNAS is running in A VM (Windows 10 HyperV)

CPU Giving it 6 Threads (I9-10900)
RAM ( Allocated 16,384 GB, dynamic memory is off ) DDR4 3200Mhz
HDDs ( 5x HGST Ultrastar 7K6000 HUS726060ALE610 6TB )
OS Drive ( Virtual Disk, 120gb) (this is located on 2x MX500 250gb (Storage Spaces) MIRRORed
NIC ( Intel 82576 )
Notes:
HDDs are offline in host for HyperV SCSI passthrew.
HDDs are using the 5x Sata ports on Motherboard (Asus Prime Z590M-Plus)
Z2 setup


HOST Specs.

Windows 10 Pro

CPU : i9 10900 10core
GPU1: Intel 630 (Igpu) Prime Display + Quick Sync Use.
GPU2: Quadro P400 (only used for plex Transcode)
M.B. : Asus Prime Z590M-Plus
RAM: 64Gb 4x 16gb 3200Mhz G.Skill Aegis
PSU : Evga G6 750w
HBA: LSI 9207-8i
NIC # 2 : Dual RJ45 Intel 82576 (PCIe x1)
OS Drve: ADATA sx8200 Pro 1tb
Other Drives:
5x HGST Ultrastar 7K6000 HUS726060ALE610 6TB (sata motherboard)
2x 500gb PNY C900 SSD (HBA)
2x MX500 250gb SSD (HBA)
2x 4Tb HGST Ultrastar (‎HUS724040ALE641) (HBA)
1x 8TB Ironwolf NAS (HBA) (this is Hotsawp bay)

 

[ChrisRJ]

Am I missing any unforeseen issues ... (is this a bad idea) ?

According to the people who have a lot more experience with this than I (looking at you, @jgreco and @joeschmuck ) it is indeed. Please have a look at the virtualization link from the recommended readings in my signature.

 

[jgreco]

(Windows 10 HyperV)

Hyper-V isn't known to be a stable hypervisor for virtualization. It used to be that FreeBSD wasn't even supported by Hyper-V; now, it seems it might, but it still doesn't have a lot of miles on it.

HyperV SCSI passthrew

That sounds like a bad idea. I believe that's the Hyper-V version of ESXi RDM, which is known to be problematic. I wouldn't trust it because TrueNAS needs to be able to reliably detect things such as drive insertions, errors, and SMART, and these edge cases are the things that can make you bleed.

Please review

"Absolutely must virtualize FreeNAS!" ... a guide to not completely losing your data.

[---- 2018/02/27: This is still as relevant as ever. As PCIe-Passthru has matured, fewer problems are reported. I've updated some specific things known to be problematic ----] [---- 2014/12/24: Note, there is another post discussing how to deploy a small FreeNAS VM instance for basic file...

www.truenas.com

 

[jgreco]

Also, moderator note, moved to Virtualization forum.

 

[joeschmuck]

So, I wanted to Setup Truenas as VM inside windows .. just to test it out

What is your expectation of "testing it out"? If you tried it and played with the GUI, maybe that is all you need to do.

As for testing on a windoze system, I'd recommend using VMWare Workstation. This is free for home use and I often will run up a test system on my laptop using this to test out TrueNAS. I don't put any important data on the system, it's just for testing.

As for your data drives, if they were created correctly then you should be able to create a bootable ESXi USB drive, create a TrueNAS VM, and configure your LAN, Drives, etc. and import them, then have access to your data that way. I would recommend testing TrueNAS this way of course or you could just create a bootable TrueNAS USB flash drive and run it directly on your system. Just be careful of any drives not part of your pool, you do not want to damage the data on them. If you could remove them first, that would be the safest move.