Upgrading FreeNAS and going vm

muppie

Dabbler
Joined
Jul 18, 2016
Messages
18
Hi!

I built my first FreeNAS two-three years ago. I used to have a lot of different gear but am trying to downsize to a single server if possible. I'm planning on getting rid of everything but my FreeNAS and my new iPad Pro.

My goal is the following:
* Plex media server (not many more concurrent streams than I have today, i.e. 2-3)
* Nextcloud for personal document storage
* Windows 10 VM when the need arises (mainly idle, but always running)
Possible another vm with Sonarr etc.

I have failed miserably with bhyve and from what I've understood, it's not very suitable to run VMs on. So my plan is to change to esxi and run FreeNAS as a virtual machine (here I need a bit of help) and then to run the other VMs on ESXi instead.

My current server is currently speced as follows:

Chassi: Fractal Design Node 804
Motherboard: SuperMicro X11SSH-LN4F
Ram: 3x 16GB ECC
CPU: Intel E3-1260 v6
Hard drives: 8x3TB WD Reds (Raidz2)
1x250GB Samsung Evo 850 SSD for VMs

I've understood that I should have a HBA card to and pass it through to the FreeNAS vm and then connect the drives to that. Would the LSI MegaRAID SAS 9341-4i be good for that, flashed to IT mode?

I want to try and keep as much as possible but within reason, money is not an object :) I'm changing the chassi to a 4u rack mount in order to increase the number of drives when the need arises.

I know my way around a server, but am in no way nothing more than a prosumer so if this is a bad idea, please tell me, otherwise I'm really looking forward to your input. I'm based in Sweden so second hand equipment is most likely a no go since there isn't any.
 

muppie

Dabbler
Joined
Jul 18, 2016
Messages
18
I see I might have been pretty unclear.

I would like to run he ESXi as host and then add the other VMs on top.
 

Yorick

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Nov 4, 2018
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1,912

Yorick

Wizard
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Nov 4, 2018
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You do have one other option: Everything as jails, and just one Windows VM, directly on FreeNAS. Some folk have good experience with virtio Win10 VMs, RDP only. Worth testing.

If you are going to run more VMs in future than you are mentioning then, yes, VMWare.
 

klatoszy

Dabbler
Joined
Feb 13, 2020
Messages
13
My 2 cents:
1 - I have been running FreeNAS as VM hosted by ESXi for few years with storage PCI passthrough. If you do this right it will work rock solid. At first I booted ESXi form onboard SATA and LSI card in IT mode was assigned to FreeNAS VM. Later on I consolidated disks and wanted to save on power consumption and did following: remove LSI card, boot ESXi from PCIE NVMe SSD, onboard Intel SATA is PCI passthrough to FreeNAS. This is my current setup.

2 - A firend of mine runs FreeNAS baremetal and runs VirtualBox in jail. The drawback of this solution is that somtimes jails stop working during FN upgrade and you need to spend some time to recover.
 

Inxsible

Guru
Joined
Aug 14, 2017
Messages
1,123
I would throw in another option of running Proxmox on it and then use as many damn VMs or containers as you want. Create a VM for FreeNAS and passthrough the disks/HBA to the FreeNAS VM

Advantage of Proxmox in my opinion are :
  1. Based on Debian -- so pretty familiar instead of learning specific ESXi related commands on the esxcli
  2. Easier to find most information -- again since it's just Debian behind the scene.
  3. No need to have VMWare accounts etc just for downloading updates etc.
  4. Completely free & open source as opposed to ESXi
  5. ESXi has limitations in terms of virtual CPUs and clustering (although for home users this doesn't matter as much)

I run Proxmox on my VM server and then have LXC containers for transmission, guacamole, bitwarden, heimdall and VMs for my nextcloud and an Archlinux desktop (that I use on my LAN as a PCOIP). The individual containers are great, because if one service goes down for whatever reason (say a botched upgrade) your other services are still up and running.
 

Inxsible

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Aug 14, 2017
Messages
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Here's a tutorial on how to setup FreeNAS as a VM on Proxmox. A bit dated as it's using the Proxmox 4.X version. But you can get an idea of the steps to follow in case you go that route.

 

muppie

Dabbler
Joined
Jul 18, 2016
Messages
18
Here's a tutorial on how to setup FreeNAS as a VM on Proxmox. A bit dated as it's using the Proxmox 4.X version. But you can get an idea of the steps to follow in case you go that route.

I’ll look into proxmox. i’ve heard of it but never used. Thanks!
 

Inxsible

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Aug 14, 2017
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Inxsible

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Would the LSI MegaRAID SAS 9341-4i be good for that, flashed to IT mode?
I think this was left unanswered....

Check the LSI sticky thread to make sure the card you are looking at can be flashed to IT mode. Better yet, buy one that is already flashed. You might need an 8i card to support all 8 drives of yours. Otherwise you will need to use 2x4i cards which is just a waste of PCI slots IMO.
 
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