Unmessed-with pass-thru?

[meimeiriver]

Greetings, fellow FreeNAS-ers! :) Actually, I'm not on FreeNAS-er yet, but planning to. And I could use some clarification, please.

I'd like to install FreeNAS inside a VM box (like everyone else, it seems, LOL). My idea was to put an entire SATA controller pass-thru to FreeNAS (instead of just individual physical drives). My question is, how can I ensure Windows (10) will not mess with the disks on said controller?! Even having disks visible in your file explorer often means Windows does some sneaky stuff with them (like subtle rewrites of a GPT table on an USB stick). If I learned anything already, it's that *no external* influence should try and interfere with ZFS.

Thank you.

 

[meimeiriver]

Hmm, maybe I should just do this on my ESXi 6 server. ESXi should not try and interfere with pass-thru controllers, right?

 

[Spearfoot]

Greetings, and welcome!

Yes, you need to virtualize FreeNAS on ESXi, taking care to pass-through the disk controller, on a motherboard with Vt-d support. You may be able to pass-through a motherboard's built-in SATA controller, but I haven't tried it myself; my motherboard (Supermicro X10SL7) has an integrated LSI HBA and I pass that to FreeNAS.

Search for "virtualize freenas" and you will find a lot of posts about this subject! :)

Also, this guide is very informative.

I've never heard of anyone virtualizing FreeNAS on Windows... and somehow that seems like a very, very bad idea!

 

[meimeiriver]

Greetings, and welcome!

Yes, you need to virtualize FreeNAS on ESXi, taking care to pass-through the disk controller, on a motherboard with Vt-d support. You may be able to pass-through a motherboard's built-in SATA controller, but I haven't tried it myself; my motherboard (Supermicro X10SL7) has an integrated LSI HBA and I pass that to FreeNAS.

Search for "virtualize freenas" and you will find a lot of posts about this subject! :)

Also, this guide is very informative.

I've never heard of anyone virtualizing FreeNAS on Windows... and somehow that seems like a very, very bad idea!

Thanks!

Yeah, this is very likely not going to work on VMware Workstation (primarily because Windows would mess with the disks). But on my ESXi server, I have high hopes. :) I have an old P6X58D Premium motherboard, with ICH10R and Marvell SATA controllers. If they don't work, I'll buy a new LSI controller.

 

[Spearfoot]

Thanks!

Yeah, this is very likely not going to work on VMware Workstation (primarily because Windows would mess with the disks). But on my ESXi server, I have high hopes. :) I have an old P6X58D Premium motherboard, with ICH10R and Marvell SATA controllers. If they don't work, I'll buy a new LSI controller.

Oh, you can install FreeNAS on VMware Workstation (or VirtualBox) on your PC desktop -- but only with small virtual disks, to learn and experiment with -- not for any kind of production use with valuable data!

That ASUS motherboard doesn't support ECC memory, so it won't make a good FreeNAS server. See:

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hardware-recommendations-read-this-first.23069/
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/ecc-vs-non-ecc-ram-and-zfs.15449/

...for details.

Good luck!

 

[meimeiriver]

Oh, you can install FreeNAS on VMware Workstation (or VirtualBox) on your PC desktop -- but only with small virtual disks, to learn and experiment with -- not for any kind of production use with valuable data!

That ASUS motherboard doesn't support ECC memory, so it won't make a good FreeNAS server. See:

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hardware-recommendations-read-this-first.23069/
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/ecc-vs-non-ecc-ram-and-zfs.15449/

...for details.

Good luck!

Why, that's kinda sad. Not going to throw away my good old i7 980X + mobo for FreeNAS, though. I'm probably better off buying an 'old-school' RAID controller then.