Using one SSD that will be backed up

[AxAn]

Hi,

I'm using FreeNas in a rather basic way. I got 3 GB hard-drives in some sort of mirroring config (forgot how I set it up, but I can post info about that later) where I store photos etc.
I upgraded my desktop computer and now got an 500 GB SSD-drive left over. I normally run a few instances with VirtualBox on my desktop computer but I was now thinking about taking the 500 GB SSD and put it in the FreeNas machine and put the VirtualBox instance files on that one and run it over the local 1Gbit network, using the SDD for speed that the mechanical NAS-drives can't deliver.

My question: How can I make sure that my added 500 GB SSD is getting backed up in a good way?

Is it possible to do some mirroring of there SSD to a part of the existing setup?

I'm open to suggestions on how to do this in a good way.

 

[Chris Moore]

VirtualBox instance files on that one and run it over the local 1Gbit network

You will certainly be disappointed with the speed as 1Gb networking is significantly slower than a local SSD.
For the description of use, your best choice is to put the SSD back in the desktop computer.

 

[Chris Moore]

I'm open to suggestions on how to do this in a good way.

The only way to get full performance of the SSD would be to upgrade to 10Gb networking.

 

[AxAn]

Thank you for your input Chris.

The VirtualBox instances that I use are not very read/write intensive so my goal of moving them to FreeNas would mainly be to keep them more safe then having them on a single disk in my desktop. But since I had the left over SSD I was thinking of a way to get the speed up, compared to mechanical NAS disks.

It would probably be fine for me to simply put the VirtualBox files directly on my current nas-config but I'm still curios if there is a way to use the SSD in FreeNas and keep it mirrored/back'ed up?
I understand that this is not a normal user case.

 

[pro lamer]

You may run some backup software in the VM backing up to the FreeNAS HDD pool...

Sent from my phone

 

[pro lamer]

Some other scenario from the top of my head:
1. Shutdown the guest OS
2. Replicate to HDD (using block aware tool - zfs send may work)
3. Start the guest again

Sent from my phone