Updated virtual advice

[jflaplante]

Hi to all, first post here...

I've been using FreeNAS and now TrueNAS for some years now on a VMWare ESXi server without drive hardware passthrough. Almost every info I could gather on that setup says that it is a super bad idea and that ZFS need to interact directly with the controller/drives.

On the two TrueNAS systems I configured, one was an ESXi VM configured with a TrueNAS made raid 5 pool made from 3 x 12tb VMFS disks (no passthrough) and the other was also an ESXi VM but the pool was made from a whole 12x 4tb raid 5 array configured in the Dell H710 perc, again with no hardware passthrough. None of those 2 systems gave me any problem and one of them (#1) even lost power abruptly quite a few times before I realised the the UPS battery was dead.

The current install instructions for TrueNAS core have sections for both VM and AWS and none of them give out any warnings against doing what many many people are saying not to do: configuring a pool from disk space not directly managed by TrueNAS.

I guess my question would be: Is it still a bad idea and I've been incredibly lucky over the years OR is there a few warnings missing from the install instructions?

Thanks for your advices.

 

[sretalla]

Almost every info I could gather on that setup says that it is a super bad idea and that ZFS need to interact directly with the controller/drives

So you have found the right information.

None of those 2 systems gave me any problem and one of them (#1) even lost power abruptly quite a few times before I realised the the UPS battery was dead.

You have been lucky.

The current install instructions for TrueNAS core have sections for both VM and AWS and none of them give out any warnings against doing what many many people are saying not to do: configuring a pool from disk space not directly managed by TrueNAS.

You're right, that's potentially problematic.

I guess my question would be: Is it still a bad idea and I've been incredibly lucky over the years OR is there a few warnings missing from the install instructions?

Warnings are missing.

People will lose data in the cloud if they do it as recommended.