My current Windows server does file serving and a few other minor server things. I'd like to move to FreeNAS and put Windows under VirtualBox on FreeNAS for the minor tasks (it has plenty of CPU/RAM). I've got a few questions:
- Is running Windows in VB under FreeNAS as simple as "install VB, run phpVB, follow the prompts, and optionally do any other config", or is there more to it?
- I've read about jails and have the basic concept. Do I need to set VB to run in a jail for best protection/isolation of the main FreeNAS system+zfs file server processes/storage volumes, if so how?
- Are the VM containers kept on the main zfs volume or isolated on a separate volume? Any advantages to the latter?
- How do I arrange specific device passthrough for exclusive use of a given VM? Four kinds of devices I would actually use:
* Dedicated HDD for a specific VM (so the HDD is actually NTFS/ReFS and not just NTFS/ReFS-in-a-virtualised-container)
* USB mouse/kb/flash stick
* Dedicated video card (so I can manage FreeNAS on one display and direct Windows VM to another)
* A not-so-common PCIe card used by Windows s/w, which won't have a FreeBSD driver and needs to be 'seen' directly by the VM.
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