VMFS-tools

[IanPractichem]

There is an open source project for mounting vmfs filesystems and they support FreeBSD. Project page: http://glandium.org/projects/vmfs-tools/

I was wondering if it is possible to get this working on FreeNAS. Jails come to mind as the obvious way, but then how do I grant a jail access to my datastore files? Can I just have the jail mount the files, or will that mess things up? Has anyone else had experience with this?

 

[cyberjock]

I've never tried it, and I don't think it's been mentioned here before.

As for mounting an iSCSI device, seems at least possible to do from inside a jail. You'd be able to copy stuff in/out with that method. But if your plan is to mount the VMs file systems themselves, you'll probably be disappointed. FreeBSD support for non-BSD file systems is pretty unreliable and has lots of limitations and such. :/

 

[IanPractichem]

I got vmfs-tools installed in a jail, but it threw fuse errors whenever I tried to mount a datastore. I think this may be caused by nullfs and the fact that the files are already mounted from another datastore. I was wondering how difficult would it be to install vmfs-tools in FreeNAS without using a jail?

 

[cyberjock]

I'd classify it as "if you have to ask, you won't be able to do it".